Mass gatherings can result in morbidity and mortality from communicable and non-communicable diseases, injury, and bioterrorism. Therefore, it is important to identify event-related visits as opposed to community-related visits when conducting public health surveillance. Previous mass gatherings in Virginia have demonstrated the importance of implementing enhanced surveillance to facilitate early detection of public health issues to allow for timelyresponse. Between June 2015 and September 2015, VDH coordinated with two healthcare entities representing six acute care hospitals to conduct enhanced surveillance for the 2015 World Police and Fire Games and 2015 Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) RoadWorld Championships. VDH established initial communicationwith each healthcare entity between 1 week to 2 months before theevent start date to discuss functional requirements with technical,informatics, and clinical staff.
Objective
To describe the planning strategies and lessons learned by theVirginia Department of Health (VDH) when conducting enhancedsurveillance during mass gathering events and coordinating withhealthcare entities to distinguish event-related emergency department(ED) visits from community-related ED visits