Biosurveillance as national policy: The United States’ national strategy for biosurveillance

It may not have come with a grand unveiling during a well-attended press conference from the Rose Garden of the White House, but the National Strategy for Biosurveillance could potentially change how the United States government conceptualizes disease surveillance and the health/security nexus. With its release on 31 July 2012, the National Strategy for Biosurveillance (NSB) began the process of being translated from strategic plan to operational program. The NSB appears to be one of the ¿rst times, if not the ¿rst time ever, that a national government has adopted a conscious, public strategy that explicitly connects its biosurveillance activities to broader national security strategies. In his introductory letter, Obama explicitly emphasizes that the National Strategy for Biosurveillance builds on the United States’ existing security strategies to protect human, animal, and plant health. In this way, the National Strategy for Biosurveillance goes beyond the surveillance requirements mandated by the International Health Regulations to explicitly integrate biosurveillance into a state’s larger security and operational apparatuses.