Oregon has increased its ability to respond to threats of bioterrorism by: 1) creating a health surveillance annex to the Oregon Emergency Response Plan; 2) testing and upgrading on call coverage; 3) establishing a directory of emergency response coordinators; 4) creating partnerships with local representatives of the Oregon Conference of Local Health Officials, IDSA, APIC, and the Oregon Medical Association; 5) conducting a training program on disease surveillance; 6) coordinating bioterrorism preparedness; 7) developing a guided education packet for local health departments; 8) creating a bioterrorism web page; 9) acquiring reagents and validating laboratory procedures for identifying biologic agent; 10) training public health and clinical laboratories in the identification and referral of potential bioterrorism samples; 11) determining local laboratory capability in the State; 12) organizing a Bioterrorism Preparedness Coordinating Committee; 13) conducting a technical capacity survey of local health departments; 14) developing a distance learning task force; and, 15) approving local health department plans for improving technical capacity and distributing grant awards to establish those improvements. Project year two plans (August 31, 2000 to August 30, 2001) included 17 goals. Among these goals were establishing a syndromic surveillance system, assisting local health departments in the creation of a local disaster preparedness, training outbreak teams, assessing the training requirements of level a laboratories, developing a computer-based training curriculum, providing orientation exercise, technical assistance, and facilitation to local health departments, and improving and testing an alert notification system. This paper contained contact information and key emergency contacts.