Public health agencies worldwide all enjoy the same mission—providing healthcare warnings, guidance, and support to the public and healthcare professionals they represent. A critical element in achieving this mission is accessing timely and comprehensive surveillance information about disease in their regions of responsibility.

Work on vaccination timing and promotion largely precedes the 2009 pandemic. Post-pandemic studies examining the wide range of local vaccination efforts mostly have been limited to surveys assessing the role of administrative strategies, logistical challenges, and perceived deterrents of vaccination [1].

Objective

Seasonality has a major effect on the spatial and temporal (i.e. spatiotemporal) dynamics of natural systems and their populations (1). Although the seasonality of influenza in temperate countries is widely recognized, inter-regional spread of influenza in the United States has not been well characterized.

Objective

To study the seasonality of influenza in the United States between 1972 and 2007 through the evaluation of the timing, velocity, and spatial spread of annual epidemic cycles.

Much progress has been made on the development of novel systems for influenza surveillance, or explored the choices of algorithms for detecting the start of a peak season. The use of multiple streams of surveillance data has been shown to improve performance but few studies have explored its use in situational awareness to quantify level or trend of disease activity. In this study we propose a multivariate statistical approach which describes overall influenza activity and handles interrupted or drop-in surveillance systems.

Objective