Official Washington, DC constitutes a paradise for the generation of acronyms that involve public policy initiatives. For example, U.S. involvement in outer space exploration gave rise to the highly recognizable acronym NASA. Public figures, such as the nation’s chief executive have their own designations, e.g., POTUS. The health domain also has its fair share of visible acronyms as evidenced by the existence of COVID, NIH, CDC, FDA, and the ACA, with the latter serving as a shorthand version of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
It is not difficult to imagine the average length of time for eyes to glaze over completely when listeners to an oral presentation or readers of a document repeatedly are exposed to an item along lines of an apocryphal Society of Newsletter Editors Who Love Acronyms (SNEWLA). Generally, many periodicals in the health professions prove to be a rich source of additions to a steadily growing verbal mountain of acronyms. A noteworthy example is the Journal of Medical Entomology. An article in the March 2022 issue has a focus on achieving public policy goals to prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases.
Included among this smorgasbord of acronyms are the following: Vector-borne diseases (VBD); West Nile virus (WNV); CDC Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC); Mosquito Abatement for Safety and Health (MASH); Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation (PAHPAI) Act; Centers of Excellence (COEs); and CDC Southeastern regional center of excellence in vector-borne diseases (SERCOEVBD). These items appear in the article in ways that highlight the importance of sustained efforts needed to achieve legislative goals by collectively identifying specific areas for (1) improvement, and (2) solutions to address national inadequacies in vector-borne disease policy and infrastructure.
An effective vector-borne disease response in the U.S. is a task that requires national policy to fund research and control efforts against both endemic and epidemic diseases. One major opportunity to influence policy authorized to protect against VBD threats is balancing short-term versus long-term goals (i.e., fixing versus preventing a problem). Whereas the story of federal funding in the last 18 years is reactive to emerging VBDs, in recent years there have been efforts to create a proactive system. Emergency funds acquired during the 2016 Zika virus outbreak were used to establish five Regional Centers of Excellence (COEs) in Vector-Borne Diseases with the goal of preventing and responding to emerging vector-borne disease across the United States.
These COEs work to train public health entomologists, vector biologists, and medical providers in VBD-related skills and knowledge; develop and validate effective prediction, prevention, and control methods and tools; and strengthen and expand communities of practice. Conventional wisdom is that there will be additional vector-borne disease threats in the near future, whether in the form of the vectors themselves or pathogens crossing borders. The only way to address future threats responsibly will be through stable, consistent funding. As with many other worthwhile public policy endeavors, such as efforts to enhance the allied health workforce, persistence will be required from one year to the next.