Tsai Stella

Hurricane ‘Superstorm’ Sandy struck New Jersey on October 29, 2012, causing harm to the health of New Jersey residents and billions of dollars of damage to businesses, transportation, and infrastructure. Monitoring health outcomes for increased illness and injury due to a severe weather event is important in measuring the severity of conditions and the efficacy of state response, as well as in emergency response preparations for future severe weather events. Following the experience with Hurricane Sandy and the foreseeable need to be prepared for future severe weather events, NJDOH initiated a project to develop a suite of 20 indicators in EpiCenter, an online system which collects emergency department chief complaint data in realtime, to perform syndromic surveillance of extreme weather–related conditions.

Objective

To introduce and describe methods for evaluating and refining custom classifier keyword lists for syndromic surveillance of several post-severe weather event conditions and to report findings from New Jersey’s syndromic surveillance of selected conditions in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

In New Jersey, real-time emergency department (ED) data are currently received from EDs by Health Monitoring Systems Inc.’s (HMS) EpiCenter, which collects, manages and analyzes ED registration data for syndromic surveillance, and provides alerts to state and local health departments for surveillance anomalies.

EpiCenter receives pre-diagnostic chief complaint data from 78 of 80 acute care and satellite EDs. The need for more specific information raises the possibility that other data elements from EDs such as triage notes can be of utility in detecting outbreaks without a significant delay. This study evaluates the inclusion of triage notes in EpiCenter to detect a recent increased usage of synthetic cannabinoids. At the time of this evaluation, three New Jersey hospitals were providing triage notes in their EpiCenter data.

Objective

Describe the inclusion of triage notes into a syndromic surveillance system to enhance population health surveillance activities.

Hurricane ‘Superstorm’ Sandy struck New Jersey on October 29, 2012, causing harm to the health of New Jersey residents and billions of dollars of damage to businesses, transportation, and infrastructure. Monitoring health outcomes for increased illness and injury due to a severe weather event is important in measuring the severity of conditions and the efficacy of state response, as well as in emergency response preparations for future severe weather events. Following the experience with Hurricane Sandy, NJDOH initiated a project to develop a suite of 19 indicators, known as the Severe Weather Classifier (SWC) in EpiCenter, an online system which collects emergency department chief complaint data in real-time, to perform syndromic surveillance of extreme weather–related conditions. NJDOH has since used these classifiers in more recent events to monitor for weather-related visits to storm-affected area emergency departments (ED’s).

In June, 2015, a squall line of damaging thunderstorms, known as a “bow echo,” caused downed wires and multi-day power outages in Camden and Gloucester counties in southern New Jersey. Almost exactly seven months later, in January, 2016, Winter Storm Jonas dropped more than a foot of snow over New Jersey. These events provided an opportunity to assess the indicators within SWC. 

Objective

To report the results of the application of New Jersey’s Severe Weather Classifier in New Jersey’s syndromic surveillance system during two extreme weather events.