Webinar to consider design for a future Australian Centre for Disease Control

The establishment of a CDC is now on the political agenda with the Labor Party promising to create one if it wins government. Meanwhile a webinar is set to take place on what a future CDC might look like. 

In 2017, well before the COVID-19 pandemic, the AMA called for the immediate establishment of an Australian National Centre for Disease Control with a national focus on current and emerging communicable disease threats, engaging in global health surveillance, health security, epidemiology and research.

The pandemic has only highlighted the need for such a body and its potential benefits.  AMA Vice-President Dr Chris Moy told The Guardian earlier this year that a CDC would be able to provide consistent communication in future pandemics, noting he’d been frustrated by a lack of consistency in communication between states, territories and commonwealth during the pandemic and which had caused confusion in important messaging.

The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) is now taking registrations for a webinar on 11 April on Design Principles for a CDC.

“While we cannot make assumptions about the election outcome, now is an important time for the public health community to discuss what such an entity might seek to do and how it might be constituted,” the PHAA says on its website.

The webinar will explore:  

 • What roles should the states play?

• What should its scope be?

• What powers and responsibilities should it have? • What might be the best organisational structure? • What kind of resources would be necessary?

• Should it include responsibility for preventive health?

• Should it lead public health workforce developments?

• How should it engage internationally?

Panellists will include, Adj Prof Tarun Weeramanthri, President, PHAA; Adj Prof Terry Slevin, CEO, PHAA; Prof Sharon Lewin, Director, Doherty Institute; Prof Allen Cheng, Monash University; Dr Craig Dalton, Hunter New England Population Health and Dr Leanne Coombe, University of Queensland.

You can register for the webinar here.