About the Coral Disease and Health Consortium

The Coral Disease and Health Consortium (CDHC) was created in 2002 in response to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force’s (USCRTF) National Action Plan to Conserve Coral Reefs with a goal of providing coastal and ocean managers with scientific understanding and tools to help protect healthy coral reef ecosystems and restore degraded ones.

The CDHC is a network of field and laboratory scientists, coral reef managers, and agency representatives devoted to understanding coral health and disease. It is extensive, highly collaborative, and completely voluntary. Members include federal and state agencies along with academia, non-profit and industry that contribute their time and expertise to the CDHC. The commitment to share information, ideas, and common goals led to the development of several guidance documents that have inspired many to seek funding and devote new resources to the study, treatment and management of coral diseases.

U.S. Coral Reef Task Force Resolution 16.6 in 2006, requested the Coral Disease and Health Consortium to serve as a Task Force Working Group to organize and coordinate scientific resources to address coral health and disease issues and link them to coral reef management (such as Local Action Strategies), with emphasis on diagnostics, etiology, outbreak investigations, training, and responses. 

In response to the growing threat posed by coral disease, the Task Force Coral Disease Working Group expanded its efforts in 2020 to provide support for local response, mitigation, and prevention efforts, and enhance coordination among activities occurring at the national level.

CDHC Featured Products:

• Coral Disease and Health: A National Research Plan (2003)
• Coral Disease and Health Workshop: Coral Histopathology II (2007)
• Field Manual for Investigating Coral Disease Outbreaks (2008)
• Coral Health and Disease in the Pacific: Vision for Action (2009)
• Guidance for an Epidemiological Strategy and Establishing a Disease Surveillance Network for Caribbean Acropora palmata (2015)