2016 International Society for Disease Surveillance Conference New Frontiers in Surveillance: Data Science and Health Security

The International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) held its fifteenth annual conference in Atlanta, GA, from December 6-8, 2016. Since 2001, individuals interested in sharing and learning emerging trends in surveillance research and practice have found the ISDS Annual Conference a unique forum to advance their knowledge in the discipline of disease surveillance. The 15th ISDS conference received a total of 233 abstracts from 23 countries. From the submissions, 189

(81%) were accepted for presentation at the conference as an oral presentation (N=96) or poster (N=93). The theme for the 15th annual conference was New Frontiers in Surveillance: Data Science and Health Security. The theme united two dominant trends in public health surveillance: 1) a growing desire to extract knowledge from increasing volumes of structured and unstructured data available from health information systems; and 2) increased pressure on nations to strengthen their capacity for disease surveillance and response to outbreaks when and where they occur across the globe. In addition to the major themes of the conference, abstracts were accepted in additional tracks that remain important to the practice of public health around the world: One Health uniting animal and human health; Methodological advances in applied epidemiology; Public health informatics; Public health policy; and Biosurveillance practice.