In response to the 1999-2000 outbreak of avian flu in Italy, Capua and colleagues proposed and developed a novel strategy for vaccinating commercial poultry against the disease, which was adopted and enabled the industry to avoid a complete shutdown.

In February 2006, Capua drew international attention when she challenged the existing system for granting scientists access to genetic material sequenced from influenza viruses.

[11] Prior to joining the Italian Parliament, Capua served as director of the Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences for the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (IZSVe), Legnaro in Padua.

In 1999-2000, responding to a persistent but relatively non-virulent strain of H7N1 avian flu hindering Italy’s commercial poultry industry, Capua and collaborators developed an innovative approach, which was dubbed the "DIVA" strategy (Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals) as a tool to support eradication practices.

[16] During the outbreak of panzootic H5N1 influenza, which could be transmitted from birds to people, Capua's lab in Padua received a sample of the viral strain recently introduced in Nigeria for typing and characterization.

[17] The journal Science reported on Capua’s effort, stating that she had "renewed the debate about how to balance global health against scientists' needs to publish and countries’ demands for secrecy.

[20] Recently, Capua has been coordinator of the workgroup on Avian Influenza of EPIZONE[21] scientific excellence network, which has been set up to improve the control of the epizootic diseases in Europe.

Epizone is a new European Commission project under the sixth research framework programme (FP6), priority 5 (food quality and safety), and it has a budget of €14 million over five years.

Today, the WHO, FAO, and OIE promote and support better sharing mechanisms, data transparency, and an interdisciplinary approach to improve preparedness for pandemic events.