Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

01 May, 2020

The International Health Regulations (IHR2005) dictate the need for countries to establish disease outbreak capacity including the ability to rapidly respond(1). Public health rapid response teams (RRTs) are multidisciplinary teams, trained and equipped, to rapidly deploy to a public health emergency in coordination with a larger emergency response framework.Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, RRTs can be a key asset within a country’s public health emergency response system and can be used throughout all stages of an outbreak response. Although historically RRTs or their equivalents have been used in outbreak response, there has been no documented systematic and standardized approach to the establishment and management of RRTs for disease outbreaks to maximize their utility in an emergency(2-6). Additionally, RRT challenges concerning multidisciplinary staffing, roster management, training, and standard operating procedure (SOP) development have led to critical delays in outbreak response.Thus, underscoring the vital need for RRT preemptive planning to ensure rapid and effective outbreak response strategies(6). This document provides guidance to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of multidisciplinary RRT operations during an outbreak response by outlining select mechanisms and processes for RRT establishment and management. Further, this document highlights the extensive nature of the processes requisite for setting up and maintaining a functional, trained and ready-to-deploy RRT workforce. As countries seek to develop and more formally institute their emergency response capacity under global initiatives,such as the Global Health Security Agenda and voluntary Joint External Evaluations, this document aims to provide standardized guidance to United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff providing technical assistance for RRT capacity development.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/global-covid-19/RRTManagementGuidance-508.pdf