The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its third report detailing preparedness and response activities across the nation. Public Health Preparedness: Strengthening the Nation’s Emergency Response State by State examines the ability of state health departments and some localities to respond to health threats caused by disaster, disease, and chemical dangers. Two previous reports, released in 2008 and 2009, dealt with similar capacity assessments.

States are in great shape when it comes to making laboratory assessments of risk, communicating danger to the public and authorities, and distributing supplies in response to an event, according to the recent report. A few areas might be slow to activate their emergency operations centers, the report found, and others lack robust laboratory facilities and resources.

Despite the increasing level of state preparedness touted in the report, the CDC made five recommendations. Those include: continue identifying service gaps, develop lessons learned from the H1N1 pandemic, provide funds to hire skilled and capable public health and lab workers, expand performance measures and accountability, and promote healthy communities to improve resilience to threats.

The data analyzed in the report range from October 2007 to September 2008, with some 2009 data also included. Data was collected from all 50 states and Chicago, the District of Columbia, Los Angeles County, and New York City—local governments directly funded by the CDC. Individual fact sheets are available for each locality.