Melissa Sweet and Alison Barrett write:
The Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) is expected to launch as an independent entity at the beginning of 2026, Health Minister Mark Butler said this week, although next year’s federal election and many other factors may affect these plans.
Even if the launch goes as predicted, the CDC will have a massive task to meet its to-do list, as suggested by the COVID-19 Response Inquiry’s report this week, especially as the inquiry wants many of the recommendations completed within the next 12-18 months.
Croakey notes that this to-do list for the CDC doesn’t mention action on pressing climate health concerns, which did not receive much attention from the COVID inquiry.
This seems a missed opportunity given the importance of integrating responses to infectious diseases, chronic diseases and climate mitigation and adaptation efforts across the health sector and beyond.
As well, the National Health, Sustainability and Climate Unit is now located within the interim CDC, and is charged with implementing the National Health and Climate Strategy.
Below we summarise some of the report’s key recommendations for the new CDC. Presumably much of this work will fall on the interim body, established in January this year within the Department of Health and Aged Care.
Butler said the CDC will be headquartered in Canberra, with its functions very closely reflecting the recommendations from the inquiry’s report.
In addition to the $90 million previously allocated to establish an interim CDC, Butler announced the Government is investing $251 million over the forward estimates, as “well as funding ongoing” to establish the CDC, to commence from 1 January 2026, pending legislation which will be introduced to Parliament next year.
The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) said it is not clear what functions this funding will cover, but expected “significant additions” would be needed to properly fund major national preventive health programs.
The PHAA said the inquiry report proposed founding principles on which the CDC should be created:
- Multi‑way cooperative relationships with the states and territories and non‑government organisations
- Complementing and enhancing existing health and emergency governance architecture
- Transparency, trust and independence
- Certainty of funding for investment in world‑leading data‑sharing and surveillance systems
- Building on the foundation established by the interim CDC.
Inquiry’s tasks for CDC in the next 12-18 months
It is not clear when the Government will respond to the inquiry’s recommendations for the CDC, which are outlined below.
Work on finalising the CDC needs to ensure that it complements and enhances existing emergency and health governance architecture, according to the report.
Communications
The CDC is to become a trusted and authoritative source on risk assessment and communication, and a national repository of communicable disease data, evidence and advice.
This involves developing a communication strategy for use in national health emergencies that ensures Australians, including those in priority populations, families and industries, have the information they need to manage their social, work and family lives.
The strategy should create a central public health emergency communications hub that serves as a single source where the Australian public can find integrated information about the emergency response around the country.
It should be informed by behavioural science and risk communication expertise, and proactively seek to ensure consistency of messaging between levels of government, providing supporting rationale and evidence for different approaches.
The inquiry says the CDC has a role in increasing Australia’s health data literacy, and recommends leveraging existing communication channels through professional bodies, unions, local government and advocacy groups.
It should meet the diverse needs of communities across Australia, including through co-design, and include a strategy for addressing the harms arising from misinformation and disinformation.
Data
The CDC should build foundations for a national communicable disease data integration system, enabled for equity and high-priority population identification and data interrogation, with pre-agreements on data sharing.
It should finalise an evidence strategy and key priorities to drive optimal collection, synthesis and use of data and evidence, address data gaps and develop linkages to public health workforce capability data.
This would include identifying inconsistencies and gaps in shared data with the states and territories to prioritise for national surveillance data linkage, and upgrading existing datasets by improving data consistency and enabling data linkage readiness.
The CDC should finalise work underway to establish clear guardrails for managing data security and privacy and enabling routine access to linked and granular health data, and establishing pre-agreements and processes for the sharing of health, economic, social and other critical data for a public health emergency.
It should publish a report on progress against key priorities identified in this data strategy.
The CDC should establish structures including technical advisory committees to engage with academic experts and community partners. These groups should bring together technical expertise as required to contribute to preparation of pandemic guidelines and rapid research-gap advice. They should also advise on developments in their fields that should be incorporated in future pandemic detection and response strategies; assist in designing and reviewing pandemic exercises; and advise on national technical capacity and training needs.
The CDC should commence the upgrade to a next-generation world-leading public health surveillance system, incorporating wastewater surveillance and early warning capability.
The inquiry also envisages a role for the CDC, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Aged Care and the newly established Medical Workforce Advisory Collaboration, in addressing the lack of a unified whole-of-system single source of health workforce data, which was a significant problem during the pandemic.
Planning
The CDC should work with the Department of Health and Aged Care and jurisdictions on updated communicable disease plans, including management plans for priority populations.
It should conduct biennial reviews of Australia’s overall pandemic preparedness in partnership with the National Emergency Management Agency.
It should map and enhance national pandemic detection and response capability, and develop updated health emergency planning and response arrangements in conjunction with states and territories, and key partners, including consideration of escalation and de-escalation points, real-time review and a focus on post-emergency recovery.
As part of this, the CDC should take the lead, together with other departments and agencies, on an enhanced National Health Emergency Plan (updated National Health Emergency Response Arrangements) and updated National Communicable Disease Plan. These updated plans should align with the Australian Government Crisis Management Framework.
It should develop modular operational plans for specific sectors, including high-risk settings, which can be deployed in response to a variety of hazards. The series of plans should have clearly defined scope, ownership and accountability, including a clear legal basis and defined roles for Commonwealth bodies (including the CDC), states and territories, and industry partners such as aged care providers.
The CDC should also contribute to the design of the National Quarantine Strategy, which should formalise governance arrangements around the activation of quarantine, with a focus on triggers for de-escalation and recovery.
Inquiry’s recommended medium-term actions
The inquiry says these following tasks should be done “prior to the next national health emergency”. (The inquiry is apparently confident the next national health emergency is not a short-term concern.)
The CDC should participate in efforts to build emergency management and response capability through regular health emergency exercises with all levels of government, interfacing with community representatives, key sectors and a broad range of departments, as well as broader Australian academia, industry and civil society groups.
The CDC should work with the National Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and other agencies to better consider the linkages between plant, animal and human biosecurity incidents. This includes strengthening governance arrangements for emerging infectious diseases using a One Health approach.
Other tasks include planning for how Treasury and the CDC will work together to integrate health and economic data and analysis; and finalising agreements by the CDC on the sharing of health data between the Commonwealth and the states and territories.
Challenges ahead
The CDC is to achieve all these tasks while setting up, staffing and developing a new organisation, and negotiating a stack of competing interests and stakeholders, as well as the inevitable political tensions.
The inquiry concluded that a CDC could have made a huge difference to Australia’s pandemic responses, addressing problems such as inadequate data flow between jurisdictions, according to an article in The Conversation this week.
“One of the inquiry’s key take-home messages is that the lack of strong, independent, central co-ordination hampered our pandemic response,” wrote Dr Jocelyne Basseal and Professor Ben Marais wrote.
“The ongoing challenge will be to ensure it delivers optimal long-term health benefits for all Australians.”
The PHAA says that the states’ and territories’ contribution to a federal CDC model is still to be clarified.
In discussions between government officials surrounding the creation of the CDC since 2022, it has been agreed that only a cooperative, federated model involving all the state and territory governments, their health officials and their statutory roles and powers, would be an effective outcome, according to the PHAA.
States and territories have been clear that they do not wish to see any disruption to their official public health functions, and that the state and territory roles and powers necessary for pandemic management cannot effectively be absorbed by the Commonwealth Government, the PHAA says.
“We need now to hear what specific contribution the states and territories will make to improving pandemic preparedness. I’m concerned that, as the worst of the pandemic is behind us, state and territory investments in public health are falling to pre-pandemic levels or lower,” said CEO Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin.
“The state and territory Chief Health Officers were key in the defence against COVID-19. This must continue and be effectively linked with the work of a national CDC. This is the vision that the Inquiry Report has strongly recommended.
“No one wants the CDC to be a Canberra-only institution – the best approach is for the CDC to have a presence in every state and territory, and work in unison with state and territory public health institutions.
“The states and territories already contribute some resources, but they will need to step up to provide a greater contribution. Capacity to respond locally is just as important as capacity to respond nationally.”
The PHAA said it had persistently advocated that the CDC’s functions should include addressing chronic or non-communicable disease prevention from the outset.
The inquiry’s report also makes clear that non‑communicable diseases and the wider determinants of health should be included in the CDC’s future functions, the PHAA said.
It quoted the inquiry’s report: “There is a strong link between pandemic preparedness and a healthy population with managed levels of non‑communicable disease. Pandemics also have a direct impact on the prevalence and management of chronic diseases.”
Further reading
Australia’s COVID inquiry shows why a permanent ‘centre for disease control’ is more urgent than ever, by Jocelyne Basseal and Ben Marais in The Conversation
Historic step towards an Australian CDC, by Malcolm Balmaan in Intouch Public Health
From social media
See Croakey’s archive of articles on Australia’s Centre for Disease Control