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School Health Surveillance

Description

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.

Submitted by Magou on
Description

MRSA, which had been known primarily as a cause of healthcare-associated infections, increasingly has been recognized as a cause of skin infections among persons of all ages who have little or no contact with healthcare settings. Such infections are the most common cause of skin and soft-tissue infections among patients presenting to emergency departments.

 

Objective

The Nebraska Department of Heath and Human Services (NDHHS) Office of Epidemiology conducted ongoing surveillance to monitor statewide incidence of physician diagnosed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections among high school football and wrestling participants during school years 2008–09 and 2009–10.

Submitted by uysz on
Description

In April 2009, a novel strain of influenza A was detected in Mexico, which quickly spread to the United States and the rest of the world. In response to the pandemic, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (NH DHHS) developed a web-based school absenteeism reporting system to track and record overall absenteeism and influenza-like-illness (ILI) related absenteeism in New Hampshire schools.

Objective

To monitor community illness and detect outbreaks during the 2009 influenza A/H1N1 pandemic using a newly developed surveillance system for monitoring school absenteeism.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Recognizing the threat of pandemic influenza and new or emerging disease such as SARS, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that schools work in partnership with their local health departments “to develop a surveillance system that would alert the local health department to substantial increases in absenteeism among students.”3 Tarrant County’s pilot project system meets that need and transcends absenteeism data; it seeks to quantify ILI in schools and lets school nurses view daily maps of changing disease patterns, access flu prevention resources, and receive and respond to action items suggested by TCPH. While the focus is on seasonal flu, best practices for mitigating seasonal flu also apply to pandemic flu. Because the system uses open source software4 , it’s affordable and replicable for other public health agencies seeking to strengthen their school partnerships as well as their local or regional biosurveillance capabilities.

Objective

This oral presentation will share key findings and next steps following the first year of a pilot project in which Tarrant County, Texas schools used a Web-based system to share their daily health data with Tarrant County Public Health (TCPH) epidemiologists, who can use ESSENCE1 to analyze the data. The projectís ongoing goal is to reduce the magnitude of flu outbreaks by focusing on school-aged children and youth, where infectious diseases often emerge first and spread rapidly.2

Submitted by elamb on