Abstract
Airport-based pathogen monitoring is a critical tool that can contribute to early detection and characterization of existing and new pathogen threats. A novel public-private partnership between an airport spa group, a biotech company, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was instrumental in establishing a multimodal pathogen genomic surveillance program at US international airports. That public-private partnership addressed critical challenges that neither party could overcome independently, resulting in the development and deployment of a scalable, flexible early warning system for pathogen detection and public health monitoring.