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Event surveillance

Utah has a centralized State Health Department and 12 Local Health Departments situated throughout the state. Coordination of outbreaks or events that crosses jurisdictions has been historically difficult. Utah has not had a functional NEDSS-compliant database until 2009 and still does not have an Outbreak Management System (OMS). A survey was sent to Local Health Departments to assess their perception of need for real-time knowledge of current outbreak/events, with the majority indicating that current processes were inadequate.

Objective

The aim of this project was to create a secured web-based application that would run within the PH Access communication framework at the Utah Department of Health. This applicationFEpi Issue TrackerFwould provide State and Local Health Departments with an environment that can be used to monitor actions during an event. We created a tracking system that functions as a combination dashboard/ notification system to permit timely and effective communication of epidemiology events. This tracking system, Epi Issue Tracker, is used by all 12 Local Health Departments and the State Department of Health to share information across the state. There have been 830 issues/outbreaks entered into Epi Issue Tracker since January 2009, with 647 updates posted for those issues/outbreaks.

Referenced File
Submitted by Magou on

Public health and medical research on mass gatherings (MGs) are emerging disciplines. MGs present surveillance challenges quite different from routine outbreak monitoring, including prompt detection of outbreaks of an unusual disease. Lack of familiarity with a disease can result in a diagnostic delay; that delay can be reduced or eliminated if potential threats are identified in advance and staff is then trained in those areas. Anticipatory surveillance focuses on disease threats in the countries of origin of MG participants. Surveillance of infectious disease (ID) reports in mass media for those locations allows for adequate preparation of local staff in advance of the MG. In this study, we present a novel approach to ID surveillance for MGs: anticipatory surveillance of mass media to provide early reconnaissance information.

 

Objective

To present the value of early media-based surveillance for infectious disease outbreaks during mass gatherings, and enable participants and organizers to anticipate public health threats.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

People usually celebrate holidays by inviting family and friends to have food at home, or by gathering and eating at restaurants or in other public venues. This increased exposure to food with a common source can create conditions for outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses. Holidays can also be targeted by bioterrorists who seek to maximize physical damage, psychological impact, and publicity around dates of patriotic or religious significance. They might aim at contaminating food and water supplies, especially with CDC-defined category B agents that can cause diseases such as salmonellosis, shigellosis, cholera, crytosporidiosis, as well as infections with Escherichia coli O157:H7 and the Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens. Hence, there is a need to quantify whether gastrointestinal illnesses increase around holidays. This can also help determine a baseline of the incidence to which future holiday periods should be compared to. This research does not focus on specific reportable diseases. That will be the purpose of forthcoming research. Instead, ED visits with gastrointestinal symptoms are used to leverage the capability of syndromic surveillance for early detection.

Objective

To quantify Emergency Department (ED) visits with gastrointestinal symptoms during Federal holidays in Miami-Dade.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

In Connecticut (CT), several syndromic surveillance systems have been established by the Department of Public Health (DPH) to detect and monitor potential public health threats. The emergency department syndromic surveillance (EDSS) routinely categorizes chief complaint data into pre-defined syndrome categories, and also has the flexibility to define syndromes in real-time. Thus, DPH can use this system for situational awareness during public health events. Several recent events provided an opportunity to evaluate EDSS for this purpose: 1) two cases of cutaneous anthrax in CT in September 2007; 2) national and local media attention surrounding MRSA infections and published research in October 2007 and 3) the introduction of rotavirus vaccine through the Vaccines for Children Program in July 2006 following its licensing in February 2006.

 

Objective

To evaluate the performance of the CT EDSS system for situational awareness during specific public health events.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Infection Control Law in Japan has asked doctors to cooperate in syndromic surveillance for pandemic flu and smallpox since 2007. However, doctors have to report by typing the number of patients on the web site, or by sending a fax to local public health centers. It imposes the heavy burden of reporting, and thus it has not worked well yet. Therefore, we need an automatic system for routine syndromic surveillance.

 

Objective

We performed some syndromic surveillance system for the Hokkaido Toyako G8 summit meeting in July 2008 in Japan as a counter-measure to bioterrorism attack or other health emergency. This presentation shows the workable syndromic surveillance systems in Japan.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

When the Chicago Bears met the Indianapolis Colts for Super Bowl XLI in Miami in January, 2007, fans from multiple regions visited South Florida for the game. In the past, public health departments have instituted heightened local surveillance during mass gatherings due to concerns about increased risk of disease outbreaks. For the first time, in 2007, health departments in all three Super Bowl-related regions already practiced daily disease surveillance using biosurveillance information systems (separate installations of the ESSENCE system, developed at JHUAPL). The situation provided an opportunity to explore ways in which separate surveillance systems could be coordinated for effective, short-term, multijurisdictional surveillance.

 

Objective

This paper describes an inter-jurisdictional surveillance data sharing effort carried out by public health departments in Miami, Chicago, and Indianapolis in conjunction with Super Bowl XLI.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

A large event such as the Super Bowl that attracts over 120,000 visitors to an area within a short period of time has the potential to increase the risk of communicable diseases and environmental hazards in a community in addition to the possibility of a bioterrorist attack. Though Miami-Dade County Health Department has in place a syndromic surveillance system, additional public health measures were implemented to ensure the health and safety of all residents and visitors in the weeks surrounding the February 4th event.

 

OBJECTIVE

To identify unusual patterns of communicable diseases, health events or bioterrorism-related activity in Miami-Dade County immediately before, during and after Super Bowl XLI.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Syndromic surveillance has been used been used as method of surveillance for various events in recent years. For example, post September 11th, 2001 anthrax attacks in New York City, World Youth Day in Toronto 2002, Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics, Democratic National Convention Boston 2004, and the G8 Summit in Scotland 2005.

 

Objective

Historical Emergency Department (ED) visits were examined to characterize ED utilization for the weeks before, during and after Queen’s University Homecoming weekend in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. This information was used to prospectively monitor the 2006 Homecoming period and inform key stakeholders.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse in Idaho was anticipated to lead to a large influx of visitors in many communities, prompting a widespread effort to assure Idaho was prepared. To support these efforts, the Idaho Syndromic Surveillance program (ISSp) developed a plan to enhance situation awareness during the event by conducting syndromic surveillance using emergency department (ED) visit data contributed to the National Syndromic Surveillance Program’s BioSense platform by Idaho hospitals. ISSp sought input on anticipated threats from state and local emergency management and public health partners, and selected 8 syndromes for surveillance. Ideally, the first electronic message containing information on an emergency department visit is sent to ISSp within 24 hours of the visit and includes the chief complaint for the visit. Data on other variables, such as diagnosis codes, are updated by subsequent messages for several days after the visit. Chief complaint (CC) text and discharge diagnosis (DD) codes are the primary variables used for syndrome match; delay in reporting these variables adversely affects timely syndrome match of visits. Because our plan included development of new syndrome definitions and querying data within 24 hours of visits, earlier than ISSp had done previously for trend analysis, we sought to better understand syndrome performance.

Objective:

In August 2017, a large influx of visitors was expected to view the total solar eclipse in Idaho. The Idaho Syndromic Surveillance program planned to enhance situation awareness during the event. In preparation, we sought to examine syndrome performance of several newly developed chief complaint and combination chief complaint and diagnosis code syndrome definitions to aid in interpretation of syndromic surveillance data during the event.

Submitted by elamb on
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