Contingency Planning Project

With funding from the Minnesota legislature, CIDRAP’s chronic wasting disease (CWD) program has initiated a collaboration with national and international experts to draft comprehensive, authoritative guidance for a spillover to humans or non-cervid production animals. CIDRAP’s approach is unique in that no other governmental agency, organization, or academic center has included all of these disciplines to address risk of a CWD spillover event.

CIDRAP has convened five working groups of 70 leading CWD experts for this contingency planning effort. Ten of these experts are providing additional guidance by serving as cochairs of the groups, which specialize in wildlife health and management, public health, human medicine, prion biology and diagnostics, veterinary medicine, and agriculture science.

These groups are discussing the state of disease knowledge and identifying the actions required should spillover occur. Based on these discussions, the CWD program will develop, refine, and share a blueprint for preparedness and response planning with stakeholders. 

Chronic Wasting Disease Working Group Subject Areas and Co-chairs

Human medicine and public health surveillance, epidemiology, laboratory capacity, planning and response 

• Brian Appleby, MD | Director, National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center |Professor, Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Pathology, Case Western Reserve University University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center

• Lawrence Schonberger, MD, MPH | Assistant Director for Public Health | Chief, Prion and Public Health Office, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Cervid and production animal surveillance, laboratory capacity, planning and response 

• Jason Bartz, PhD | Professor and Chair, Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology | Associate Dean, Academic and Faculty Affairs, Creighton University 

• Sabine Gilch, PhD | Professor, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine | UCalgary Research Excellence Chair, University of Calgary 

Prion disease diagnostics 

• Byron Caughey, PhD | Chief, TSE/Prion Biochemistry Section, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health 

• Glenn Telling, PhD | Principal Investigator, The Telling Lab | Director, CSU Prion Research Center | Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University 

Carcass and contaminated item disposal 

• Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, PhD, MS | Professor and Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |  Donald R. Voelte, Jr. and Nancy A. Keegan Chair of Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Debbie McKenzie, PhD | Professor, Faculty of Science - Department of Biological Sciences | Associate Dean, Graduate, Faculty of Science, Dean's Office, Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, University of Alberta

Wildlife health and conservation 

• J. Russ Mason, PhD |  Michigan DNR Executive in Residence, Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Michigan State University

• Colin Gillin, DVM, MS | State Wildlife Veterinarian, Wildlife Health and Population Lab, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

Working group members