Nominations Needed for SHIC Rapid Response Teams

To be better prepared to meet future requests for assistance during disease outbreaks, the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) needs your help. Specifically, we need your input to help us identify people with the needed expertise to participate in regional Rapid Response Teams. A spreadsheet for nominating someone in each region can be found at https://www.swinehealth.org/rapid-response-to-emerging-disease/ under the Emerging Disease Response tab.

The objective of the Rapid Response Team is to provide timely expertise to help identify the disease etiology during the outbreak or for epidemiological investigations in outbreaks with a known etiology. A Rapid Response Team will be activated only upon the request of the producer and the veterinarian of the farm. The goal of these teams is to be on the affected farm within 72 hours of the request to SHIC.

To make sure that a person with the right expertise is available, we need multiple people from each region who are willing to participate. We’ll try to identify three people from each expertise category within each region to ask to participate on Rapid Response Teams in their region, so one will always be available. SHIC will reimburse consulting fees (if any) and customary expenses associated with participation in accordance with SHIC policy.

Good candidates for the Rapid Response Teams would include:

1. A veterinarian consultant with specific expertise in swine veterinary medicine and epidemiology
2. University Extension Veterinarian and/or Subject Matter Expert(s)
   • • Extension veterinarian for swine
   • • Swine diagnostician to take the lead in sample collection for further diagnostics in cases of outbreaks of unknown etiologies
   • • Swine epidemiologist that can take the technical lead for epidemiological surveys
3. Someone who may be able to help the team with communications or relationships in niche or alternative production.
   • • 4-H, FFA or other exhibitor groups
   • • Organic, outdoor or other niche production

How to Nominate Someone
A spreadsheet for nominating someone in each region can be found at https://www.swinehealth.org/rapid-response-to-emerging-disease/ under the Emerging Disease Response tab. Please note that there are two worksheets in the one spreadsheet – one with the map of the regions and the other with a template for nominations. Please complete the name and the contact information in the appropriate cell and email it to [email protected]. The nominees will be personally contacted and asked if they would like to be included.