“Public health surveillance guides efforts to detect and monitor disease and injuries, assess the impact of interventions and assist in the management of and recovery from large-scale public health incidents. Today’s ever – present, media – hungry environment pressures public health scientists, researchers and frontline practitioners to provide information, on an almost instantaneous basis, responsive to public and policy maker concerns about specific geographies and specific populations. Actions informed by surveillance information take many forms, such as policy changes, new program interventions, public communications and investments in research. Local, state and federal public health professionals, government leaders, public health partners and the public are dependent on high quality, timely and actionable public health surveillance data. With a charge from the CDC Director, this Surveillance Strategy aims to improve CDC’s overall surveillance capabilities, and by extension those of the public health system at large. The Strategy guides efforts to make essential surveillance systems more adaptable to the rapidly changing technology landscape, more versatile in meeting demands for expanding knowledge about evolving threats to health, and more able to meet the demands for timely and population-specific and geographically specific surveillance information. The Strategy will also facilitate work to consolidate systems, eliminate unnecessary redundancies in reporting, and reduce reporting burden.”