Michael C. Thigpen* , Chesley L. Richards*, Ruth Lynfield†, Nancy L. Barrett‡, Lee H. Harrison§, Kathryn E. Arnold¶, Arthur Reingold#, Nancy M. Bennett**, Allen S. Craig††, Ken Gershman‡‡, Paul R. Cieslak§§, Paige Lewis*, Carolyn M. Greene*, Bernard Beall*, Chris A. Van Beneden*, and for the Active Bacterial Core surveillance/Emerging Infections Program Network

Author affiliations: *Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; †Minnesota Department of Health, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; ‡Connecticut Department of Public Health, Hartford, Connecticut, USA; §Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; ¶Georgia Department of Human Resources, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; #University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, Berkeley, California, USA; **University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York, USA; ††Tennessee Department of Health, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; ‡‡Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Denver, Colorado, USA; §§Oregon State Public Health, Portland, Oregon, USA; 1Presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, September 30–October 3, 2004, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.;