In just the past decade multiple infectious diseases – SARS, H1N1, and most recently Ebola – “jumped” to humans from other animal species. Public health emergencies like these often challenge the preparedness and response of the public health and medical community in the U.S. and worldwide. As scientists are we as ready as we can be to help?

Some studies suggest that as many as 60 percent of emerging infectious diseases originated in non-human animal species, and another 17 percent originated from insects or other types of vectors. As soon as outbreaks occur, epidemiologists, public health workers, researchers, and clinicians begin research tied to the infectious disease cycle. They isolate and identify the infectious agent and perform genetic analyses. They use diagnostics to detect and track the disease. They develop or dispense lifesaving drugs or vaccines and provide guidance on the best medical treatment.

While this cycle might seem routine, each outbreak presents unique research challenges to mitigating the spread of disease, protect health and save lives. To meet these challenges, ASPR undertook a science preparedness initiative because we need the scientific community to answer timely questions during response, but also research results can enable a more educated and informed response to similar future events, maximizing recovery.

We’ve learned how critical it is to be able to perform rapid scientific research during the limited time window when the nation and the world are responding to public health emergencies, be it an emerging infectious disease outbreak, a hurricane, or an oil spill. The science preparedness effort aims to ensure that such research needs are prioritized and to support needed infrastructure for such research.

This is where scientific collections come into play.

Knowing the tools and resources available at any given point during a response and making them accessible to researchers are essential to science preparedness. Scientific collections contain a cornucopia of objects from lunar rocks to bacteria and span scientific study and disciplines.

Today, collections form a significant base of support for scientific study that informs regulatory, management, and policy decisions yet many collections are distributed across federal, state and local agencies. The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy created an Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections to support policy development, identify a systematic approach to safeguarding these valuable scientific resources and make them more readily available and accessible to the research community.

Building on this working group’s findings and recommendations, a new organization called Scientific Collections International (SciColl ) seeks to improve the rapid access to science collections globally across disciplines, government agencies and ministries, and private research institutions. Through a joint partnership, SciColl offered a novel opportunity for ASPR to explore the value of scientific research collections under the science preparedness initiative and integrate it as an important research resource at each stage in the emergence of infectious diseases cycle. We were impressed.

We also jumped at the opportunity last fall to participate in a workshop led by SciColl’s executive secretariat at the Smithsonian Institute. The workshop drew together multiple federal and international partners to explore the intersections of the infectious disease cycle and the role scientific collections could play in mitigating the disease risks.

We covered how specific collections of mammals and parasites provide evidence and understanding of disease emergence in human populations; the needs and possible ways to capitalize on the use of collections; practical research applications; policy issues surrounding use of collections in outbreaks, and more. The workshop report offers specific recommendations for data management, innovative approaches to cross-disciplinary research, communication and sample sharing.

At ASPR, we’ll continue to work toward greater collaboration and integration of scientific collections to mitigate, prevent, respond to, and prepare for emerging infectious diseases. By emphasizing the importance of scientific research and strengthening initiatives like science preparedness, we can develop policies and systems that fully realize the practical application of scientific collections.

Join us in this growing moment. Encourage your private and public research institution to get involved with SciColl and be part of the global effort toward a more systematic approach for sharing, managing, and using scientific collections. Every institution, agency, and scientific discipline is vested in the improvement and development of this vast network.

We look forward to our continued collaboration with SciColl to strengthen engagement with the stewards of scientific collections at home and abroad. From our perspective, health and safety, even our nation’s health security, depend on it.