Data Integration

Multiple agencies are involved in global disease surveillance and coordination of activities is essential to achieve broad public health impact. Multiple examples of effective and collaborative initiatives exist. The WHO/AFRO developed Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) framework, adopted by 43 of the 46 AFRO member states and applied in other WHO regions, was the first framework designed to strengthen national disease surveillance and response systems. The WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 are an agreement between 196 countries to prevent, detect and respond to the international spread of disease. In 2013 CDC worked with Uganda and Vietnam to demonstrate the development of surveillance, laboratory, and emergency response center capacity and link data systems for six outbreak prone diseases. More recently, the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was launched with the support of 28 countries, WHO, OIE and FAO just as Ebola was beginning to emerge in West Africa. This panel brings together CDC, local implementing partners, academic technical partners, and international non-government donor to discuss current and evolving strategies for prevention, detection, and response activities needed for global health security. 

Objective

The session will discuss strategies for outbreak prevention, detection, and response for global health security and explore how these activities inform both domestic and international initiatives. Innovations in epidemiology, laboratory, informatics, investment, and coordination for disease surveillance will be discussed. 

Public health surveillance largely relies on the use of surveillance systems to facilitate the identification and investigation of epidemiologic concerns reflected in data. In order to support public health response, these systems must present relevant information, and be user-friendly, dynamic, and easily-implementable. The abundance of R tools freely-available online for data analysis and visualization presents not only opportunities but also challenges for adoption in that these tools must be integrated so as to allow a structured workflow. Many public health surveillance practitioners do not have the time available to 1) scavenge for tools, 2) align their functions so as to create a relevant set of visuals, and 3) integrate these visuals into a dashboard that allows a streamlined surveillance workflow. An openly-available, structured framework that allows simple integration of analytic capabilities packaged into readily- implementable modules would simplify the creation of relevant dashboard visuals by surveillance practitioners. 

Objective

A framework and toolbox for creating point-and-click dashboard applications (at no cost) for monitoring several facets of syndromic surveillance data were created. These tools (and associated documentation) are being made available freely online for other surveillance practitioners to adopt. 

Objective

Wisconsin is leading the way in novel approaches monitoring health outcomes for opioid-related adverse events. This panel will share innovative public health informatics methods that harness various data sources (e.g., Prescription Drug Monitoring Data (PDMP), death, birth and hospitalization data) for population health surveillance. Discussion will include topics on detection of drug abuse and diversion, identifying potential neonatal abstinence syndrome cases, surveillance of substance-related hospitalizations and overdose deaths, and modeling opioid-related mortality risk factors.