Five strategic goals help distinguish successful leadership during an epidemic or bioattack in 21st century America. An informed and involved public, along with guidance and material support from respected leaders, can help achieve these aims:

• Limit death and suffering through proper preventive, curative, and supportive care; tend to the greater vulnerability of children, the frail elderly, and the physically compromised.
• Defend civil liberties by using the least restrictive interventions to contain an infectious agent that causes communicable disease.
• Preserve economic stability, managing the financial blow to victims as well as the near- and long-term losses of hard-hit industries, cities, and neighborhoods.
• Discourage scapegoating, hate crimes, and the stigmatization of specific people or places as "contaminated" or unhealthy.
• Bolster the ability of individuals and the larger community to rebound from unpredictable and traumatic events; provide mental health support to those who need it.