Fiscal Year 2025: Non-CDC-Hosted Scientific Meetings Spending Report

Key points

This report includes all non-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-hosted scientific meetings held in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 where the expenses associated with the scientific meeting exceeded $30,000. The descriptions include date and location, how the meeting advanced the agency's agenda, and the total number of attendees.

About the report

In compliance with the 21st Century Cures Act, this report includes all Non-CDC-hosted scientific meetings held in FY 2025, where the expenses associated with the scientific meeting exceeded $30,000. The descriptions include:

  • The date of the scientific meeting.
  • The location of the scientific meeting.
  • A brief explanation of how the scientific meeting advanced the mission of the agency.
  • A description of exceptional circumstances for scientific meeting where expenses exceeded $150,000.
  • The total scientific meeting expenses incurred by the agency for the scientific meeting.
  • The total number of individuals whose travel expenses or other scientific meeting expenses were paid by the agency.
OPDIV
CDC
Total Number of Scientific Meetings
19
Total Cost
$2,044,724
Total Number of Attendees
704

Total Number of Federal Attendees (travel paid by CDC)

675

Total Number of Non-Federal Attendees (travel paid by CDC)

29

Global Health Center

The Union World Conference on Lung Health 2024

Dates: November 12-16, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Bali, Indonesia

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: Each year, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) organizes a global conference to highlight innovation, expertise, and solutions to address global tuberculosis (TB) prevention, care, and elimination. The Union World Conference on Lung Health is the world's largest TB conference, where new developments and significant research findings are presented and discussed with over 5,000 experts from around the world. This conference brings together diverse stakeholders, including policymakers, government officials, TB program directors, clinicians, nurses, healthcare professionals, subject matter experts, researchers, civil society, advocates, and affected communities from over 125 developed and developing countries to tackle critical issues related to TB and lung health, with a focus specifically on the challenges faced by low-and lower-middle income populations. The Union Conference facilitates sharing TB lessons, findings, and best practices to inspire further innovation, collaboration, and commitment to ending TB worldwide. CDC's participation in the conference directly supports the mission to prevent TB and reduce TB rates in the U.S. and globally. The conference allows staff to discuss groundbreaking science and cutting-edge TB innovations with public health officials and global health partners and coordinate efforts and collaboration, building on the momentum from the UN High-Level Meeting on TB. Participation at the conference will also reinforce that CDC is at the forefront of global TB efforts, provide opportunities to effectively engage key stakeholders in global conversations, and shape the agenda to end TB by 2035.

Total Estimated Cost: $132,975

Total Attendees: 21

Total Feds on Travel: 21

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health

17th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health (D&I)

Dates: December 8-11, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Arlington, Virginia

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The theme is 'Moving Fast and Slow: Optimizing the Pace of Implementation.' The conference theme addressed the underexplored concept of the pace of Dissemination & Implementation (D&I). The D&I science community has known for decades that it takes too long for evidence-based care to reach everyone who could benefit. Much energy has been spent on the second part of the equation—can we increase the volume of evidence-based care delivered--with less attention to the optimal pace at which this should happen. In the 17th year of the D&I Conference, participants explored methodological advancements, challenges and opportunities to understanding how to investigate and optimize implementation pace across health care, and community and public health systems.

Total Estimated Cost: $36,225

Total Attendees: 12

Total Feds on Travel: 11

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 1

2024 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting & Expo: Rebuilding Trust in Public Health & Science

Dates: October 27-30, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Minneapolis, Minnesota

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: This conference supported the agency's scientific, health and technical professionals to attend the largest working meeting of public health professionals in the nation with participants from state and local health departments, tribal organizations, private and community-based institutions. Most of the participants presented scientific papers/findings and conducting panel discussions and coordinating exhibits. This conference provided unparalleled opportunities to learn from the latest research and practice, conduct hands-on assessments of the latest tools and services, network with industry experts and colleagues, and expand professional horizons. Top thought leaders discussed industry trends, emerging issues and proven methods. Attendees benefited from the goals of the conference which were to (1) provide skill-based training in public health; (2) serve as a learning, networking, and renewal experience for advocates, educators, and scientists in the U.S. on public health; and (3) attract new participants to fight to improve public health.

Description of Exceptional Circumstances: This is one of the largest gatherings of public health officials. Attendees will benefit from the goals of the conference to provide skill-based training in public health. This conference will serve as a learning, networking, and renewal experience for advocates, educators, and scientists in the U.S. and attract new students' registrants to public health. This is the premier public health conference for public health professionals. This meeting allows for public health professionals from state and local health departments, tribal organizations, private and community-based institutions and federal agency personnel from across the nation to meet to exchange critical information and scientific findings regarding public health topics. This conference provides researchers across the nation opportunities to learn from the latest research and practice, conduct hands-on assessments of the latest tools and services, network with industry experts and colleagues, and expand professional horizons.

Total Estimated Cost: $355,793

Total Attendees: 111

Total Feds on Travel: 100

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 11

2025 Society for Maternal and Fetal Medicine Pregnancy Meeting

Dates: January 27-February 1, 2025

Venue, City, State, or Country: Denver, Colorado

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) is a non-profit association representing more than 6,500 individual clinicians and researchers with expertise in high-risk pregnancy. The core membership is comprised of maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) subspecialists. MFM subspecialists are obstetricians with additional years of formal training and board certification in maternal-fetal medicine, making them highly qualified experts and leaders in the care of complicated pregnancies. Additionally, SMFM welcomes physicians in related disciplines, nurses, genetic counselors, ultrasound technicians, MFM administrators, and others working toward optimal and equitable perinatal outcomes for all people who desire or experience pregnancy. SMFM 2025 meeting provided the agency attendees with an important opportunity to meet in-person with this committee, to further our collaboration and partnership.

Total Estimated Cost: $37,659

Total Attendees: 13

Total Feds on Travel: 13

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

2024 Association of Public Health (APHL) Newborn Screening Symposium

Dates: October 20-24, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Omaha, Nebraska

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: Newborn Screening and Molecular Biology Branch (NSMBB) has been charged by the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act Reauthorization to provide, among other things, "technical assistance" and "technology transfer" to "newborn screening laboratories to ensure analytic validity and utility of screening tests." This newborn screening symposium is the single, most important opportunity for NSMBB each year to inform the entire domestic newborn screening community about (1) CDC's innovative laboratory method improvements that will improve their testing workflows, (2) new reference materials that we have developed for various newborn screening conditions that are available for their use to assure accuracy in newborn testing, (3) our investigations that address testing challenges such as unexplained variations in their biomarker levels that may be impacted by environmental factors, (4) new opportunities for training that will allow them to make improvements in laboratory practice and competencies for new and emerging biochemical and molecular testing platforms. Attending this meeting will also allow NSMBB to discuss innovations being made on the ED3N (Enhancing Data-driven Disease Detection in Newborns) Data Modernization Initiative Project, that is being created to improve newborn screening result interpretation in state programs using enhanced data interoperability, data processing, analytics and visualization techniques. In addition, as in previous symposiums, NSMBB will host an exhibit table to answer questions and get feedback from all State Public Health newborn screening programs.

Total Estimated Cost: $53,109

Total Attendees: 20

Total Feds on Travel: 20

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

2024 International Society for Exposure Science (ISES) 2024 Annual Meeting

Dates: October 20-24, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Montreal, Canada

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: Recognizing that engagement with stakeholders and community leaders is key to effective environmental education, remediation, and decision-making. The 2023 ISES conference theme, Connecting Communities & Science through Addressing Environmental Exposures, will examine the ways in which individuals and organizations can work together to identify the exposures, work to reduce exposures and improve our communities. The 2024 ISES meeting will address new and re-emerging environmental exposures and their causal link to human health and our communities.

ATSDR uses forensic methods and modeling with air and subsurface sampling data to determine the source of indoor air vapors. Determining the source of indoor air contamination is central to making the best recommendations to reduce exposures, when needed. Sharing this information with experienced scientific peers will validate ATSDR methods and elicit valuable feedback on ways to improve our Agency's analyses.

This meeting will allow attendees to communicate with expertise in the field of exposure science on assessing exposure toxic chemicals in susceptible populations to better understand and respond to the complex and multidisciplinary issues in exposure and environmental health.

Topics discussed at the conference are directly related to ATSDR's mission to investigate the relationship between environmental factors and health, developing guidance, and building partnerships to support healthy decision making.

Total Estimated Cost: $91,340

Total Attendees: 20

Total Feds on Travel: 20

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases

2024 ASM Rapid Applied Microbial Next-Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatic Pipelines ASM NGS

Dates: October 13-16, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Washington, DC

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: Genomic sequencing and molecular epidemiology are indispensable tools for clinical reference diagnostics, public health surveillance outbreak detection and response. This session will discuss how sequencing is being used in clinical and public health microbiology, and the challenges and successes in implementing these technologies successfully in routine and standard practice.

Bridging Silos: Exploring Mechanisms for Collecting and Sharing Microbial Genomic Data to Foster Interoperability

Amassing large microbial genomic datasets have become turnkey. However, collecting rich contextual data, getting these datasets submitted to public or private repositories and extracting slices of these data across projects for broader analyses is still a barrier for advancing this field. This session will explore methods for improving contextual data and creating more interoperability between datasets and repositories.

Secret Ingredient: NGS to Uncover the Role of Microbes in Agricultural and Food Systems

Understanding microbial diversity and function in natural and built environments is critical for enhancing productivity, resilience and health of agricultural and food systems. NGS can uncover the role of microbes in soil, plant and animal health. It can also help pinpoint the origins of contamination events, antimicrobial resistance and other pathogen risks. This session will highlight genomic and microbiome research in environmental, veterinary and food microbiology. Through attendance, staff will be able to integrate this information immediately across the many CDC strategic plans for sequencing, molecular epidemiology, and antibiotic resistance detection, surveillance and response in healthcare settings.

Total Estimated Cost: $65,437

Total Attendees: 19

Total Feds on Travel: 15

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 4

2024 ASTMH Annual Meeting

Dates: November 13-17, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: New Orleans, Louisiana

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of its kind, bringing together world-class experts from academia, government, non-profits, philanthropy, NGOs, industry, military and private practice. The meeting is designed for researchers, professors, government and public health officials, military personnel, travel clinic physicians, practicing physicians in tropical medicine, students and all health care providers working in the fields of tropical medicine, hygiene and global health. The goal is to advance scientific agendas by making humans and our planet healthier which in turn furthers CDC's mission of saving lives and protecting people from health threats.

Description of Exceptional Circumstances: The conference goal to advance scientific agendas by making humans and our planet healthier is aligned with CDC's mission of saving lives and protecting people from health threats.

Total Estimated Cost: $337,224

Total Attendees: 117

Total Feds on Travel: 112

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 5

2025 InFORM Regional Meetings

Dates: January 28-29, 2025

Venue, City, State, or Country: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: InFORM Regional Meetings support efforts to prevent and control disease, disability, and death caused by foodborne, waterborne, and environmentally transmitted infections. Participants can:

  • Discuss strategic goals and exchange expertise about improving surveillance systems and practices for detecting, investigating, and controlling enteric disease outbreaks
  • Learn in joint and discipline-specific sessions for environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, health communicators, and other federal, state, and local public health officials involved with foodborne and enteric disease outbreak response.
  • Network and share knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned with other professionals.

Total Estimated Cost: $73,084

Total Attendees: 55

Total Feds on Travel: 54

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 1

European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) 2025

Dates: April 11-15, 2025

Venue, City, State, or Country: Vienna, Austria

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: This conference addresses public health laboratory issues, trends and technologies related to emerging infectious diseases, environmental health, emergency preparedness, informatics, food safety, newborn screening, global health and more. These are topics that align with CDC's mission of increasing health security. CDC is the lead public health laboratory response agency and sets standards that are not only used domestically but also internationally. CDC attendance at this conference is crucial in providing input on public health laboratory practices and policies.

Total Estimated Cost: $39,932

Total Attendees: 9

Total Feds on Travel: 9

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

Infectious Disease (ID) WEEK 2024

Dates: October 16-20, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Los Angeles, California

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: IDWeek is the joint annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP).

IDWeek is a forum for health professionals of varied backgrounds to collaborate, cooperate, and learn from each other's expertise. With so many common issues and challenges cutting across our four disciplines, IDWeek provides an opportunity to learn from each other's knowledge, experience and expertise, for the improvement of patient care and public health. This is an inclusive meeting that offers access to internationally recognized leaders in the field and the opportunity to network with the most highly respected health professionals in infectious diseases, including HIV.

Description of Exceptional Circumstances: IDWeek is the only annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Medical Association (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP). Its dual focus on infectious disease research and treatment makes this a conference of special interest to CDC. CDC participants provide CDC's public health perspectives in the form of abstracts, posters and presentations highlighting the agency's latest findings on epidemiology, surveillance, and prevention of infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. Learn of new scientific developments directly related to ID programs across CDC. Convene with multiple CDC funded partners to review and plan activities. Convening with multiple organizations (i.e., academic centers, professional associations, etc.) to develop relationships, explore and exchange ideas.

Total Estimated Cost: $443,318

Total Attendees: 135

Total Feds on Travel: 132

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 3

Integrated Foodborne Outbreak Response and Management (InFORM) Regional Meeting-Central Regional Meeting

Dates: February 11-12, 2025

Venue, City, State, or Country: St. Louis, MO

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency InFORM Regional Meetings support efforts to prevent and control disease, disability, and death caused by foodborne, waterborne, and environmentally transmitted infections. Participants can:

  • Discuss strategic goals and exchange expertise about improving surveillance systems and practices for detecting, investigating, and controlling enteric disease outbreaks.
  • Learn in joint and discipline-specific sessions for environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, health communicators, and other federal, state, and local public health officials involved with foodborne and enteric disease outbreak response.
  • Network and share knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned with other professionals.

Total Estimated Cost: $65,212

Total Attendees: 51

Total Feds on Travel: 49

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 2

International Conference on Neglected Tropical Disease Research (InCORNTD) in Africa

Dates: January 20-22, 2025

Venue, City, State, or Country: Kigali, Rwanda

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: To bring together key stakeholders to address how to eliminate NTDs from the region through operational and carefully focused research. The objectives of this meeting are two-fold: 1) to inform the NTD community about new research results and 2) to prioritize remaining operational research questions. This advances strategy of eliminating Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Total Estimated Cost: $64,727

Total Attendees: 14

Total Feds on Travel: 13

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 1

University of North Carolina (UNC) Water and Health Conference 2024

Dates: October 14-18, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The UNC Water and Health Conference is the premiere conference for international water, sanitation, and hygiene. The event support's CDC's mission to improve Global Health Security and reduce Antimicrobial Resistance by bringing together policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to share best practices for improving public health by achieving universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services that are safe, affordable, and sustainable, as well as discussing best practices for disease detection through environmental and wastewater sampling.

Total Estimated Cost: $63,029

Total Attendees: 24

Total Feds on Travel: 23

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 1

National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention

2024 National HIV and Hepatitis Technical Assistance Meeting (NASTAD)

Dates: October 16-18, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Washington, DC

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: NASTAD's 2024 National HIV & Hepatitis Technical Assistance Meeting will allow ADAP coordinators, Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) Part B coordinators, prevention managers, and hepatitis coordinators from states and CDC directly funded jurisdictions to participate in various conversations about HIV and hepatitis policy, clinical developments, and innovative programming. The meeting will include focused discussion on fostering the health department leadership that is crucial to ending intersecting syndemics across every region of the United States. This in-person meeting is formatted to include plenary sessions, breakout discussion sessions, and affinity sessions; more than 300 participants will attend during the three-day event. Federal partners from CDC, HRSA, and other agencies will participate in a federal partners roundtable and answer questions from participants. Finally, the meeting will include informal networking opportunities for health department staff to share lessons learned with peers from across the United States and meet with industry partners in the exhibit space. The meeting will advance the CDC mission by determining best practices for viral hepatitis.

Total Estimated Cost: $54,909

Total Attendees: 25

Total Feds on Travel: 25

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control

2024 National Research Conference for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms

Dates: December 9-11, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Seattle, Washington

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The 2024 National Research Conference for the Prevention of Firearm Related Harms will highlight the current state of science and research on firearm injury prevention across lifespan. Attendees will have opportunities to enhance knowledge of current firearm injury prevention research, meet with partners regarding existing firearm injury data to support firearm injury prevention activities, as well as share ideas and innovative approaches to injury and violence prevention.

Total Estimated Cost: $32,958

Total Attendees: 16

Total Feds on Travel: 16

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

Office of Laboratory Systems and Response

Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) 2025 Annual Conference

Dates: May 4-8, 2025

Venue, City, State, or Country: Portland, Oregon

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The conference is an event for the public health laboratory community, bringing together leaders, scientists, influencers and partners to share issues, trends and best practices driving laboratory science and public health today. This conference benefits CDC by providing opportunities for CDC to engage with national laboratory leaders on laboratory best practices, biosafety and biosecurity, and H5N1 response. APHL is an important CDC partner and collaborator to build effective laboratory systems across the United States, ensuring the health and safety of Americans from infectious disease, chronic disease, and environmental exposures.

Total Estimated Cost: $32,314

Total Attendees: 11

Total Feds on Travel: 11

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology

American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 2024 Annual Symposium

Dates: November 9-13, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: San Francisco, California

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: The AMIA Annual Symposium is the world's premier meeting for the research and practice of biomedical and health informatics. Building on more than 45 years of sharing research and insights for leveraging health information and cutting-edge technologies to improve human health, this annual event draws more than 2,000 informaticians from across the nation and around the world.

Total Estimated Cost: $35,037

Total Attendees: 15

Total Feds on Travel: 15

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0

Office of Science

Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research PRIM&R Annual Conference (PRIMR24)

Dates: November 17-20, 2024

Venue, City, State, or Country: Washington, DC

How the Meeting Advanced the Mission of the Agency: PRIMR24 is designed to educate and connect all those involved in research and research oversight, and to support the field in thinking holistically about the research enterprise and achieving our shared goal of advancing ethical, responsible, and high-quality research. The conference includes sessions and networking opportunities specific to human subjects' protections, crossover topics related to shared oversight challenges, emerging research challenges, and enhancing trust and trustworthiness in research. CDC cannot perform its science-based and data-driven mission, maintain the public's trust, and effectively respond to emerging research challenges without adequately trained research ethics oversight personnel.

Total Estimated Cost: $30,442

Total Attendees: 16

Total Feds on Travel: 16

Total Non-Feds on Travel: 0