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Simwale O

Description

The United States outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet) is one of the five systems used for influenza surveillance in the United States. In Pennsylvania, ILINet providers are asked to report, every Monday, the total number of patients seen for any cause, and the number of patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) by age group. In order to encourage timely reporting, weekly reminders along with a data summary were sent to all sentinel providers postoutbreak recognition. Through the study period, recruitment of new sentinel sites was done through local health departments, health alerts, and training sessions. Sentinel providers were not restricted from submitting specimens to the state lab before and after the outbreak, whereas non sentinel providers had strict restrictions.

Objective

The objective of this study is to describe changes in influenza-like illness (ILI) surveillance, eight weeks before and after the 2009 A/H1N1 pandemic influenza outbreak. We examined changes in provider recruitment, composition, reporting of ILI, and we characterize ILI data in terms of timeliness, and ILI baselines by type of sentinel provider.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on