Assistance program
Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC)
$42.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 93.323
- What it does
- The purpose of this program is to protect the public health and safety of the American people by enhancing the capacity of public health agencies to effectively detect, respond, prevent and control known and emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases. This is accomplished by providing financial and technical resources to: (1) strengthen epidemiologic capacity; (2) enhance laboratory capacity; (3) improve health information systems; and (4) enhance collaboration among epidemiology, laboratory, and information systems components of public health departments.
- Who benefits
- Direct beneficiaries include all 50 states, Washington, D.C., 6 largest local health departments (Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Maricopa County, Arizona; New York City, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;), the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau or their bona fide agents.
- Who applies
- To maximize the impact of available funding, the ELC program has chosen to leverage the legislative authorities associated with this funding to limit recipients to those meeting the population thresholds described below. Working with recipients of sizeable populations allows ELC to take advantage of economy of scale in implementing programs and reducing the marginal cost of additional resources added per population served. This strategy allows ELC to reach the greatest number of people for its budget while also balancing the need for direct support to some of the United States’ largest cities and counties. Pursuant to 42 USC 300hh-31, eligible applicants include: 1. The 51 State health departments or their bona fide agents, including the District of Columbia. 2. Local health agencies or their bona fide agents, if they serve a city population of 1.5M or more (i.e., Chicago, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia). If the city does not have a public health department, then the county covering the jurisdiction may apply (i.e., Los Angeles, CA covered by Los Angeles County and Phoenix, AZ covered by Maricopa County). 3. All U.S. territories and affiliates in the Caribbean and Pacific (American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Puerto Rico, Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and U.S. Virgin Islands). *Population for county and city jurisdictions. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division - Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Counties in the United States: April 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021 - Release Date: March 2022.
- Program site
- https://www.cdc.gov/elc ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments