Background: The FAZD Center

Founded in April 2004 as a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, the FAZD Center develops products that protect the United States from the introduction of high-consequence foreign animal and zoonotic diseases, or "FAZDs" (pronounced FAZ-dees). In this context, “foreign” means “exotic to the United States” and “zoonotic” means “transmissible between animals and humans.”

At least 60 percent of all human pathogens are zoonotic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 75 percent of recently emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are of animal origin.

The FAZD Center focuses on selected FAZDs that pose catastrophic risks to human health, livestock health and the national agricultural economy, which provides about 13 percent of all U.S. jobs as well as $1 trillion in annual U.S. economic activity.

The Center's customers include:

• Office of the DHS Chief Medical Officer
  
• DHS Preparedness Directorate
  
• DHS National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center
  
• U.S. Department of Agriculture
  
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  
• State Emergency Response Agencies
  
• Agriculture Industry

Products and projects are organized by the center’s thematic categories:

• Biological Systems – Vaccines, anti-viral agents, detection/diagnostic tests and universal platforms that satisfy DHS goals of detection, diagnosis, prevention and recovery.
  
• Information and Analysis Systems – Modeling and analysis tools to support better informed decision making at multiple levels of scale.
  
• Education and Outreach Graduate programs, early responder training and stakeholder workshops to provide the next generation of science power for homeland security.
  

Each product explicitly addresses the priorities set by DHS. Each also addresses the "dual benefit" concept by reducing the risks from both intentional and natural outbreaks of FAZDs.

In-depth information is available in these key documents:

• Two Year Accomplishment Report (2006)
• Year 3 Annual Reports (2007)
• Special Report: Accomplishments, Achievements and Recognitions (2008)