Established in 2012, Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) is an informal governance cooperative of six regional disease surveillance networks working across national borders to tackle emerging infectious diseases. Each regional network is an alliance of neighboring countries that are taking a unified approach to pandemic preparedness. CORDS aims to improve global capacity to respond to infectious diseases through four strategic objectives: improving capacity, advancing One Health, promoting innovation, and building sustainable networks.
CORDS facilitates sharing case studies, technical expertise, data, best practices, and resources to help networks and their member countries develop new skills and build operational partnerships across regions. CORDS seeks to modernize disease surveillance by improving coordination among animal, human, and environmental sectors at national, regional, and international levels. CORDS serves as a venue for networks to share their innovative ideas and approaches to disease surveillance, and it also provides an organized platform for co-development of new technologies and innovations within and across regions. CORDS works to strengthen multi‐country disease surveillance networks and facilitate the creation of sustainable new networks in areas of high disease risk by providing educational materials, success stories, progress reports, and other information to networks that they can use with their respective ministries to demonstrate the value of multi-country networks.
