The purpose of this NOFO is to facilitate the partnership between CDC/National Center for Environmental Health/Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP), the CDC/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control/Division of Overdose Prevention (DOP), and the recipient to facilitate

credit:

development, implementation, and continuous improvement of a system for receiving and compiling data from US poison centers (PCs) that can be used for public health surveillance of toxic exposures at the national level.

DEHSP staff will use this system to:
1) improve surveillance for toxic exposures based on data collected from US PCs; 2) identify early markers of public health emergencies so appropriate, rapid public health response can be launched; and 3) improve situational awareness about ongoing or emerging chemical or radiological exposures.

This NOFO will fund several important activities including:
1) providing DEHSP scientists’ access to the national system of US PC call data; 2) maintaining the technological functioning of this system; 3) supporting a team of toxicologists who review specific alerts generated by this system; 4) developing and implementing enhancements to the system to improve public health surveillance capabilities to protect the public from chemical and radiologic exposures and emerging drug threats; 5) collaborating with PCs and public health to conduct a needs assessment to identify both technical and process (e.g., communication between partners who use the system) enhancements that would benefit local infrastructure and surveillance and to develop success stories and related dissemination products.