| Outbreak response | |
|---|---|
 John Snow was the first to map clusters of cholera during the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak in London. This event is widely considered the birth of modern epidemiology and lead to appropriate sanitary measures which put a stop to the outbreak. | |
| Other names | Epidemic response, epidemic control, pandemic response |
| Specialty | Public health, epidemiology, disease controlClinical epidemiology, infectious diseases |
Outbreak response or outbreak control measures are acts which attempt to minimize the spread of or effects of a disease outbreak. Outbreak response includes aspects of general disease control such as maintaining adequate hygiene, but may also include responses that extend beyond traditional healthcare settings and are unique to an outbreak, such as physical distancing, contact tracing, mapping of disease clusters, or quarantine. Some measures such as isolation are also useful in preventing an outbreak from occurring in the first place.
Epidemic response or pandemic response is when outbreak response are used within a disease outbreak that has been classified as an epidemic or pandemic.
Outbreak response is normally conducted by teams, which include infection control physicians, epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists and a number of other specialties. Mathematics and mathematicians are often involved in constructing models of disease spread.