Over the past 23 years, the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) has evolved and grown to be an essential network within the global health emergency preparedness and response landscape. The World Health Organization (WHO) and GOARN’s partners have worked continually to improve global health security by coordinating and making available the resources of the multidisciplinary Network to ensure operational readiness and scalable responses to public health emergencies.
Response Network (GOARN) partners who contributed to the development of this document. This document was produced under the overall guidance of the Alert Response and Coordination Department within the Health Emergency Response Division of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme at WHO headquarters.
This work was led by Sara Hollis (Epidemiologist, Alert and Response Coordination Department), under the supervision of Armand Bejtullahu (GOARN Manager a.i., Alert and Response Coordination Department) and Abdi Rahman Mahamud (Director, Alert and Response Coordination Department).
A technical working group composed of international experts in outbreak response from the GOARN Steering Committee, convened by the GOARN Operational Support Team, contributed to the development and review of this guidance. WHO gratefully acknowledges the wider GOARN Steering Committee for their continuous feedback on the document’s overall aims and scope. Members of the technical working group include (in alphabetical order): Gail Carson (International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium), Kieh Christopherson (Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security, Australia), Gwen Eamer (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC]), Prakash Ghimire (Tribhuvan University, Nepal), Andreas Jansen (Robert Koch Institute [RKI], Germany), Ali Khan (University of Nebraska Medical Center, United States of America), Ghassan Matar (American University of Beirut, Lebanon), Ed Newman (UK Health Security Agency [UK HSA], United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), Jerome Pfaffmann Zambruni (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF]), Lubaba Shahrin (International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh) and Oleg Storozhenko (WHO Regional Office for Europe).
The following technical experts at WHO headquarters and regional offices provided overall review and feedback (in alphabetical order): Farah Al-Shorbaji, Brett Archer, April Baller, Sara Barragan Montes, Jan Baumann, Lisa Carter, Renee Christensen, Sebastien Cognat, Marie-Amélie Degail Chabrat, Janet Diaz, Irena Djordjevic, Yajna Elouard, Qun He, Vicky Houssiere, Lisa Jensen, Tania Marie Kelly, Olivier Le Polain, Gianluca Loi, Steven McGloughlin, Madison Moon, Thomas Moran, Silvia Morreale, Ninglan Wang, Boris Pavlin, Philomena Raftery, Bruno Rocha, Jamie Rylance, Flavio Salio, Sharon Salmon, Christophe Schmachtel, Olivia Tulloch, Victoria Willet. Bruno Rocha Evia contributed to the scoping review for the GOARN Resource Compendium, consolidating numerous GOARN partner resources on key topic areas.
The following individuals from GOARN partner institutions provided valuable inputs for annexes and illustrative examples for key technical areas (in alphabetical order): Catalin Bercaru (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control [ECDC]), Simone Carter (UNICEF), Lucas Deroo (UNICEF), Victor Del Rio Vilas
