Hospitalization

To evaluate whether syndromic surveillance can detect localized outbreaks of lower-respiratory infections (LRI'­s) with limited numbers of alarms in time.

The 2003-2004 influenza season was notable for the early, intense and widespread circulation of a Type A drift variant and a resulting rush on vaccine followed by an abrupt decrease in activity by mid-January. By contrast, the 2004-2005 influenza season began with a national vaccine shortage preceding any influenza activity with the resulting need for close monitoring of influenza activity.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health developed its first syndromic surveillance system in September 2001 to monitor for possible bioterrorism events and emerging infections. This system, known as the Hospital Admissions Surveillance System, receives daily reports from all 32 Connecticut acute care hospitals on their total unscheduled admissions in various diagnostic/syndromic categories. Information from one category, pneumonia admissions, has been tracked throughout the last four years as an indicator of influenza activity. The information has been utilized to supplement data from laboratory-confirmed influenza testing. The contrasts between the 2003-04 and 2004-05 influenza seasons provided an opportunity to further examine the specificity of changes in pneumonia admissions as an index of severe influenza activity.

Objective

This paper examines the continued usefulness through the 2004-05 influenza season of a hospital admissions-based syndromic surveillance system as a supplement to laboratory surveillance to monitor severe influenza.

In Connecticut, several syndromic surveillance systems have been established to detect and monitor potential public health threats: 1) the hospital admissions syndromic surveillance (HASS) system in 2001; and 2) the emergency department syndromic surveillance (EDSS) system in 2004. For the HASS, hospitals manually categorize unscheduled admissions into 11 syndrome categories and report these aggregate counts through an internet-based system daily to DPH; all 32 hospitals participate. For the EDSS, hospitals electronically report deidentified emergency department chief complaint data to DPH, and using a computerized algorithm, DPH categorizes this data into 8 syndrome categories; currently 17 hospitals participate. As part of pandemic influenza planning, there has been an increased focus on situational awareness at the state and national level; Connecticut would likely rely on these two systems for this purpose.

Objective

To evaluate the performance of the HASS and EDSS systems in reflecting seasonal influenza activity in Connecticut and, thus, their possible utility during a pandemic.

The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 9th to 12th graders in Miami-Dade County public schools found that 69.7% of students tried alcohol, 28.3% tried marijuana, and 6.3% tried cocaine in their lifetime. Results also showed that Hispanics had a higher percentage of usage when compared to Blacks or Whites. The 2007 White House Office of National Drug Control Policy special report entitled “Hispanic Teens and Drugs” also concluded that Hispanics were at the highest risk for substance abuse. With the county’s 60% Hispanic population, this issue is of concern for the community. This is the first study to compare multiple sources of data to describe substance abuse among youth from areas such as healthcare utilization to criminal charges.

An important goal of influenza surveillance is to provide public health decisionmakers with timely estimates of the severity of community-wide influenza. One potential indicator is the number of influenza hospitalizations. In New York City methods for estimating influenza hospitalizations include asking hospitals to self-report, sending field staff to review medical records, and analyzing electronic hospital discharge data available months after influenza season is over. Given the limitations of each of these approaches, we evaluated whether electronic ED data, received daily for syndromic surveillance, could be used to monitor hospitalizations during influenza  epidemics.

Objective

To evaluate whether trends in influenza hospitalizations can be monitored using ED syndromic surveillance data.

Different studies have shown that Streptococcal infections in adults are more common among older age, blacks, and underlying chronic medical conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular and kidney diseases. In specific, other studies have demonstrated that streptococcal pyogenes can cause severe illnesses and dramatic hospital outbreaks. Furthermore, community-acquired pneumonia studies had also suggested that cardiovascular disease, severe renal disease, chronic lung disease and diabetes were associated with increased odds of hospitalization.

Objective:

To study the factors associated with streptococcal infection that led to hospitalization in Houston, Texas for years 2015-2016