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School Absenteeism

The H1N1 outbreak in the spring of 2009 in NYC originated in a school in Queens before spreading to others nearby. Active surveillance established epidemiological links between students at the school and new cases at other schools through household connections. Such findings suggest that spatial cluster detection methods should be useful for identifying new influenza outbreaks in school-aged children. As school-to-school transmission should occur between those with high levels of interaction, existing cluster detection methods can be improved by accurately characterizing these links. We establish a prospective surveillance system that detects outbreaks in NYC schools using a flexible spatial scan statistic (FlexScan), with clusters identified on a network constructed from student interactions.

Objective

To improve cluster detection of influenza-like illness within New York City (NYC) public schools using school health and absenteeism data by characterizing the degree to which schools interact.

Referenced File
Submitted by Magou on

Absenteeism is regarded as an expedient and responsive marker of illness activity. It has been used as a health outcome measure for a wide spectrum of exposures and as an early indicator of influenza outbreaks.1 A handful of studies have described its validity compared with traditional ‘goldstandards’ for influenza and ILI.2,3 We sought to further quantify the relationship between ED ILI and school absenteeism because absenteeism, as it relates to illness, and subsequent loss in productivity and wages for parents, school staff and children, is an important public health outcome.

Objective

To describe the relationship between emergency department (ED) visits for influenza-like-illness (ILI) and absenteeism among school-aged children.

Referenced File
Submitted by Magou on

The resources available in most public health departments are limited. Access to trained technical personnel and stateof-the-art computing resources are also lacking. Customizable off-the-shelf systems contribute only to creation of information silos, are expensive, and not affordable by the limited budget available to the departments of health (only growing worse with the recession). The one thing that has increased is the need for surveillance in more areas, from diseases to environmental exposures to unexpected disasters. One solution would be an adaptable system able to cope with changing requirements while reusing or eliminating infrastructure from both computing hardware and technical personnel.2 We report in this paper an instance of such system as used to perform disease surveillance across the Harris County school system. The system is designed to be customizable for surveillance of any disease, while simultaneously accommodating other use cases like disaster response and registries.

Objective

This paper describes use of semantic technologies in combination with Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) to construct dynamic public health surveillance systems1 used for just-in-time monitoring of emerging infectious disease outbreaks. The system was used for surveillance of schools in the third largest population center, Harris County.

Referenced File
Submitted by Magou on

School closure has long been proposed as a non-pharmaceutical intervention in reducing the transmission of pandemic influenza. Children are thought to have high transmission potential because of their low immunity to circulating influenza viruses and high contact rates. In the wake of pandemic (H1N1) 2009, simulation studies suggest that early and sustained school closure might be effective at reducing community-wide transmission of influenza. Determining when to close schools once an outbreak occurs has been difficult. Influenza-related absentee data from Japan were previously used to develop an algorithm to predict an outbreak of influenza-related absenteeism. However, the cause of absenteeism is frequently unavailable, making application of this model difficult in certain settings. For this study, we aimed to evaluate the potential for adapting the Japanese algorithm for use with all-cause absenteeism, using data on the rate of influenza-related nurse visits in

corresponding schools to validate our findings.

 

Objective

To determine the optimal pattern in school-specific all-cause absenteeism for use in informing school closure related to pandemic influenza.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

It has been postulated that school absenteeism, a non-traditional surveillance data source, may allow for early detection of disease outbreaks, particularly among school-aged children who may not seek emergency medical attention. Although a New York City-based study showed moderate utility of school absenteeism in biosurveillance, no study to date has been reported on school absenteeism in Los Angeles County, which contains the second largest school district in the US.

 

Objective

To evaluate the utility of school absenteeism surveillance data in Los Angeles County during the 2009–2010 influenza season.

Referenced File
Submitted by hparton on

Previous studies in developed countries showed school absenteeism data can serve as a proxy for monitoring infectious disease activities and facilitates early community outbreak detection. However, absenteeism patterns may differ in developing settings and affect the utility of the surveillance system. Despite the non-specific nature of absenteeism data, other practical challenges will need to overcome for system set up and maintenance in remote area.

 

Objective

We explored the feasibility and practicability of setting up an electronic school absenteeism reporting system for disease surveillance in rural area of Kampot province, Cambodia.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Since April 2012, an integrated syndromic surveillance system (ISSC) has been established in health facilities, pharmacies and primary schools in two rural counties of Jiangxi Province, China (1). The objective of ISSC is to integrate syndromic surveillance with case report system for infectious disease to improve the early detection of disease outbreak in rural China. Varicella is a common respiratory infectious disease among children. In most cases, it is mild but it might cause severe complications including, pneumonia, meningitis, even death (2). In this study, varicella related school absenteeism and outpatient visits in health facilities in the surveillance sites of ISSC were collected and analyzed.

Objective

To describe the features of varicella outbreak in rural primary schools and the impacts of school absenteeism surveillance on early detection of infectious disease outbreak.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Surveillance systems utilizing early indicator of disease activity would be useful for monitoring community disease pattern and facilitating timely decision making on public health interventions in an evidence-based manner. School absenteeism has been previously considered as a possible syndromic approach for monitoring influenza activity. We explored the feasibility and practicability of establishing an electronic school absenteeism surveillance system in Hong Kong for monitoring influenza-like illness (ILI) and other diseases using automatically captured data employing smart card technology.

Objective

We examined the utility of an electronic school absenteeism system for monitoring multiple types of diseases.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Absenteeism has great advantages in promoting the early detection of epidemics. School absenteeism surveillance could timely detect the aggregations of absentees in time and space, so as to provide effective early warning and prevention and control of infectious diseases outbreaks in schools. Since April 1, 2012, an integrated syndromic surveillance system (ISSC) has been implemented in rural Hubei Province, China. With school absence data, finding the optimal model and related appropriate parameters for early warning of epidemics is necessary and practical.

Objective

To explore the optimal model and its related parameters via EWMA and CUSUM (C1, C2, C3) models in school absenteeism surveillance for early detection of infectious disease outbreaks in rural China.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

As public health surveillance is becoming more and more prevalent, new sources of data collection are more evident. One such data source is school absenteeism. By monitoring the symptoms of illness recorded when students are absent, health departments ideally can pinpoint potential outbreaks prior to their existence, all at little to no cost. The symptoms reported may not amount to disease, but their increase in incidence may indicate the preliminary spread of illness. This surveillance tool is also used to develop community intervention containment practices.

 

Objective

This paper describes the application of syndromic surveillance data from area school districts to detect influenza epidemics in a county setting.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on
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