 on june 21 corha governance committee members drs erin epson and dawn terashita convened 150 people for a virtual roundtable discussion at the annual cste conference where they provided an overview of corhas mission and goals the current progress of the principles and practices for outbreak response pp and other ongoing council work they highlighted corhas pp and pathogen specific products and described how these tools can prepare public health and healthcare practitioners for hai ar outbreak responses as well as assisting in onboarding new infection prevention and control staff implementing hai ar epidemiology competency trainings establishing hai ar outbreak definitions and providing guidance for case reporting attendees and facilitators engaged in a robust conversation on their engagement with the councils current products and provided suggestions for future work for corha to consider to further improve hai ar outbreak investigation and response many of the roundtable attendees discussed how they have turned to corha for recommendations and guidance especially during the ongoing covid 19 pandemic the facilitators solicited feedback from attendees regarding the use of infection control assessment and response icar tools and the responses were mixed some attendees said they used cdcs icar tools while others used corhas templates and some developed their own workflows within their state and local agencies for infection prevention and control efforts such as conducting pre site visit calls using a motivational interview approach an underlying theme that united all these icar approaches was the need for collaboration between public health agencies and healthcare facilities especially when the sectors may have competing needs and priorities while defining roles responsibilities and regulatory requirements is important public health and healthcare should aim to begin building and leveraging their relationships before an outbreak occurs this ultimately creates the most collaborative space for public health agencies and healthcare facilities to work together to respond to outbreaks drs epson and terashita closed the session by discussing products that will be considered for development such as one pagers for the chapters of the pp standardized online tools for icars guidance for non licensed facilities updated pathogen specific thresholds and definitions and a database where healthcare facilities can track and report hai ar outbreaks to stay informed on new and updated corha products please consider subscribing to the monthly corha correspondence newsletter corha will continue to work on providing the most up to date evidence based resources for healthcare and public health professionals who aim to build standardize and improve hai ar outbreak detection reporting investigation and control corha members also welcome feedback on corha products 