Surveillance Systems

Unhealthy diet is becoming the most important preventable cause of chronic disease burden. Dietary patterns vary across neighborhoods as a function of policy, marketing, social support, economy, and the commercial food environment. Assessment of community-specific response to these socio-ecological factors is critical for the development and evaluation policy interventions and identification of nutrition inequality. Mass administration of dietary surveys is impractical and prohibitory expensive, and surveys typically fail to address variation of food selection at high geographic resolution. Marketing companies such as the Nielsen cooperation continuously collect and centralize scanned grocery transaction records from a geographically representative sample of retail food outlets to guide product promotions. These data can be harnessed to develop a model for the demand of specific foods using store and neighborhood attributes, providing a rich and detailed picture of the “foodscape” in an urban environment. In this study, we generated a spatial profile of food selection from estimated sales in food outlets in the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) of Montreal, Canada, using regular carbonated soft drinks (i.e. non-diet soda) as an initial example.

Objective

To demonstrate a method for estimating neighborhood food selection with secondary use of digital marketing data; grocery transaction records and retail business registry.

Most European countries are facing a continuous increased influx of asylum seekers. Poor living conditions in crowded shelters and refugee camps increase the risk for - outbreaks of - infectious diseases in this vulnerable population. In line with ECDC recommendations, we aim to improve information on infectious diseases among asylum seekers by establishing a new syndromic surveillance system in the Netherlands. This system will complement the notifiable disease system for infectious diseases.The aim of the syndromic surveillance system is to improve the detecting of outbreaks of infectious diseases in asylum seekers’ centres in an early stage of development to be able to take adequate and timely measures to prevent further spread, and to collect information on the burden of infection within this population.

Objective

Facing challenges to establish a new national syndromic surveillance system in the Netherlands for infectious diseases among asylum seekers.

EpiCore draws on the knowledge of a global community of human, animal, and environmental health professionals to verify information on disease outbreaks in their geographic regions. By using innovative surveillance techniques and crowdsourcing these experts, EpiCore enables faster global outbreak detection, verification, and reporting

The 9th IOIG took place in Reunion Island from July 31 to August 9, 2015. This sport event gathered approximatively 1 640 athletes, 2 000 volunteers and several thousand spectators from seven islands:Comoros, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Seychelles and Reunion.In response to the import risk of infectious diseases from these countries where some of them are endemics, the syndromic surveillance system, which captures 100% of all Emergency Department visits, was enhanced in order to detect any health event.

Objective

To describe how syndromic surveillance was enhanced to detect health events during the 9th Indian Ocean Island Games (IOIG) in Reunion Island.

As part of a statewide effort to enhance surveillance for Aedes spp.mosquitoes the Office of Border Health (OBH) took the lead inproviding technical assistance on surveillance in counties bordering Mexico. In 2016, OBH sought ways to enhance surveillance in a wider geographic area. Trap locations closer to the border were established as a priority, given high amount of traffic across the international line, high border Aedesmosquito activity, and native cases of dengue reported at the border in Mexico.

Objective

This surveillance project aims to increase and broaden coverage o fAedes spp. ovitrap locations in Arizona’s U.S.- Mexico border region through interagency collaboration.

As a participant in the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP), the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) has worked closely with our statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE) and National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) technical staff to collect and transmit emergency department (ED) data from eligible hospitals (EHs) to the NSSP. Our goal is to ensure complete and accurate data using a multi-step process beginning with pre-production data and continuing after EHs are sending live data to production.

Objective

To develop a detailed data validation strategy for facilities sending emergency department data to the Massachusetts Syndromic Surveillance program and to evaluate the validation strategy by comparing data quality metrics before and after implementation of the strategy.

The NBS is an integrated disease surveillance system deployed in 22 public health jurisdictions to support receipt, investigation, analysis and reporting, and data exchange for state reportable conditions. The NBS is governed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state, local, and territorial users that make up the NBS Community. In the early 2000’s, electronic laboratory results reporting (ELR) was implemented in an effort to improve timeliness and completeness of disease reporting. As standards-based electronic health records (EHRs) are adopted and more surveillance data become available, modern surveillance systems must consume information in an automated way and provide more functionality to automate key surveillance processes. 

Objective

The NEDSS Base System (NBS), an integrated disease surveillance system, implemented extensible functionality to support electronic data exchange for multiple use cases and public health workflow management of incoming messages and documents. 

The NEDSS Base System (NBS) is a web-based, standards- driven, integrated disease surveillance system launched in 2001 and is currently in use in twenty-two public health jurisdictions. Over the past fifteen years, the NBS has grown into a highly functional, modern application that supports: case management, electronic data exchange, metadata-driven data collection, workflow decision support, and a host of other functionalities, all of which are defined and designed through a community-based approach. 

Objective

The NEDSS Base System (NBS) is designed and developed using input from CDC programs, public health standards organizations, as well as its expansive user community. This community-based approach to development of an integrated surveillance system is described.

There is no safe level of lead in the body, and elevated lead in children can lead to decreased Intelligence Quotients (IQ) and behavioral problems. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends lead testing of children with a positive risk assessment. Children who live in low socioeconomic areas may be at higher risk for lead exposure. As recent events have shown, having an elevated lead poisoning surveillance system can be critical to ensure that there is not a community-wide lead exposure. To reach the children that may not have been screened by a primary care physician, on March 1, 2016 the Sedgwick County Health Department Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program began offering lead screenings to all children in the WIC program and their mothers. Per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, the Sedgwick County Health Department Epidemiology program (Epi) investigates anyone who has an elevated blood lead test (5 μg/dL or greater). There are two types of lead tests – screening (capillary finger stick) and confirmatory (venous blood draw).