Guest edited by Professor Dale Fisher, Dr. Gail Carson, and Dr. Lina Moses.
The Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) was established in 2000 in Geneva when WHO convened 67 key partner institutions in global epidemic surveillance and response to discuss the challenge of epidemic prone and emerging diseases faced by the world at the onset of the 21st century.
During outbreaks, the GOARN ensures that the right technical expertise and are skills are on the ground where and when they are needed most. The network pools human and technical resources for rapid identification, confirmation and response to outbreaks of international importance.
Since its establishment, the Network has deployed over 2900 public health experts including epidemiologists, doctors, nurses, logisticians, operations managers, risk communicators, social mobilisers, data analysts, entomologists among others to over 90 countries to support more than 130 outbreaks of infectious disease.
To commemorate the GOARN anniversary, we are seeking submissions of original research and front matter articles on all aspects of outbreak preparedness, response, and recovery, covering a wide range of infectious diseases including Ebola, Yellow Fever, Dengue, H1N1, Cholera, and the most recent Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
These could include, but are not limited to, research focusing on capacity building, readiness, training/simulations exercises, modes of transmission, viability studies, operational research on deployments and field operations, and survivor follow up. Other influential topics could include ethics, barriers to research, funders’ initiatives, and community engagement.
We would welcome direct submission of original research that meets the above criteria – please submit directly to BMC Medicine stating in your cover letter that you are targeting the collection. Alternatively, you can email your pre-submission queries to bmcmedicineeditorial@biomedcentral.com. After launch, the collection will remain open and accept submissions for one year (until December 2021).
Guest Editors provided guidance on the scope of this collection and advised on commissioned content. However, they are not involved in editorial decision-making on papers submitted to this collection. All final editorial decisions are with the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Lin Lee.