This syndrome was created to capture cases where the "exposure to forces of nature" diagnosis codes are sent. This was created as a starting place for weather surveillance and should capture all weather-related events that are explicitly stated and diagnosed. Please note that if your region receives a lot of sun, the primary case counts in this syndrome definition will be sunburns. KDHE has uploaded a second similar syndrome that excludes these cases.

Syndromic Surveillance System - ESSENCE

Data Source - Emergency Room Visits

This syndrome was designed to capture rabies PEP visits and animal bites (excluding insect, human, snake, arachnid, and fish bites).

The query is designed using ESSENCE syntax (from the query portal)

The query is designed to be run against emergency department and urgent care center data by querying the chief complaint-discharge diagnosis (CCDD) field.

The query does not include ICD-10 or SNOMED codes (we receive textual descriptions of all discharge diagnoses), but the codes could certainly be added.