McNabb and Chungong BMC Public Health 2010, 10(Suppl 1):S3 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/10/S1/S3 assess its own public health surveillance performance to identify and address gaps. Adopting these guiding principles, the global community should carefully circumscribe the overlapping interest, shared vision, and mutual beneﬁt of the security and public health communities within the domain of public health surveillance and deﬁne the boundaries of those mutual interests. Finally, a global forum should be established to guide consensus governance required for public health information sharing in the 21st century. Once the impediments of power and control of data are recognized, respected, and addressed, universal access to public health information can occur. Abbreviations IHR, International Health Regulations; IT, Information technology; PHI, Public Health Informatics; TB, Tuberculosis; WHO, World Health Organization. Competing interests We confirm that we do not have any conflicts of interest. Drs. McNabb and Chungong have no financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) their actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). Neither of us have financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) likely to undermine our credibility. We have no conflicts for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion. As a guest editor, Dr. McNabb will avoid selecting external peer reviewers with obvious potential conflicts of interest—for example, those who work in the same department or institution as any of the authors. He has no personal, professional, or financial involvement in any of the issues he might judge. Authors’ contributions We both contributed to the conceptualization, writing, and editing of this manuscript. We will both defend its findings. Acknowledgements We would like to recognize all the persons who contributed to the meeting on comprehensive global public health surveillance, especially our colleagues Drs. Rebecca Katz and Jose Fernandez and Jennie Gromoll. Plus, we wish to thank Dr. Muzna Mirza for her insights and review. This article has been published as part of BMC Public Health Volume 10 Supplement 1, 2010: Disease surveillance, capacity building and implementation of the International Health Regulations [IHR(2005)]. The full contents of the supplement are available online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/10?issue=S1. Disclaimer One of the authors is a staff member of the World Health Organization. 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IHR monitoring framework: checklist and indicators for monitoring progress in the development of IHR core capacities in states parties, WHO/HSE/IHR/2010.1. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-10-S1-S3 Cite this article as: McNabb SJN, Chungong S: Comprehensive effective and efficient global public health surveillance. BMC Public Health 2010, 10(Suppl 1):S3.