The revised International Health Regulations (IHR [2005]) conferred new responsibilities on member states of the World Health Organization, requiring them to develop core capacities to detect, assess, report, and respond to public health emergencies. Many countries have not yet developed these capacities, and poor understanding of the associated costs have created a barrier to effectively marshaling assistance. To help national and international decision makers understand the inputs and associated costs of implementing the IHR (2005), we developed an IHR implementation strategy to serve as a framework for making preliminary estimates of fi xed and operating costs associated with developing and sustaining IHR core capacities across an entire public health system. This tool lays the groundwork for modeling the costs of strengthening public health systems from the central to the peripheral level of an integrated health system, a key step in helping national health authorities defi ne necessary actions and investments required for IHR compliance.

This article was first published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, www.cdc.gov/eid, Vol. 18, No. 7, July 2012.