A Regional Syndromic Surveillance Data Sharing Workshop was held in Health and Human Services (HHS) Region 3 on June 9-10, 2015 at the offices of the District of Columbia Department of Health. This was the eighth workshop in a series, with the ultimate aim to reach all ten HHS regions. Although workshop specifics varied across regions, the overall objectives of each is to advance participants’ skill in syndromic surveillance practice, examine and share best practices in analytic methods, identify regional benefits and barriers to data sharing, and develop action steps for advancing inter-jurisdictional data sharing. The Region 3 workshop participants included surveillance professionals from four state public health agencies, three local public health agencies, and the District of Columbia. The workshop design used a self-directed learning and peer-to-peer problem solving and facilitation approach that included multiple points of participant contact including two pre-workshop calls, pre-andpost workshop skill assessments, a two-day in-person workshop, and follow up support after the workshop (Appendix A).
In this HHS region, invitees identified influenza like illness (ILI) and drug overdose as the focal surveillance topics for workshop activities and discussions. To prepare for the workshop, participants developed and shared analyses of ILI ED visit trends between MMWR Week 40, 2014 through MMWR Week 21, 2015 and drug overdose ED visit trends between MMWR Week 1, 2014 through MMWR Week 21, 2015. Participants envisioned that sharing SyS would provide a benefit for: improving preparedness and response, situational awareness, population health, data contextualization, best practices, and communication.