Absenteeism

Champaign and Urbana, Illinois are considered twin cities that share the University of Illinois. Due to different geographic recruitment procedures, Champaign and Urbana public elementary schools offer a particularly novel opportunity to examine the H1N1 outbreak among students. Urbana schools recruit from specific geographic areas (neighborhoods) designated by the school district whereas Champaign schools are non-selective in their composition where students residing in Champaign can attend any school within the city.

Objective

The goal of this project is to examine the patterns of school absenteeism during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 comparing two contiguous school districts with very different enrollment policies.

Syndromic surveillance uses pre-diagnostic data to inform communicable disease prevention and control. Among health zones in the province of Alberta, Canada, practices employed by public health when using elementary school illness-cause absenteeism data vary widely.

Objective

The objective of this study was to carry out a mixed-methods evaluation of the ability of standardized supports to improve the usefulness of school absenteeism syndromic surveillance for public health in Alberta.