Surveillance Systems

Evaluation and strengthening of biosurveillance systems is acomplex process that involves sequential decision steps, numerous stakeholders, and requires accommodating multiple and conflicting objectives. Biosurveillance evaluation, the initiating step towards biosurveillance strengthening, is a multi-dimensional decision problem that can be properly addressed via multi-criteria-decision models.Existing evaluation frameworks tend to focus on “hard” technical attributes (e.g. sensitivity) while ignoring other “soft” criteria (e.g. transparency) of difficult measurement and aggregation. As a result, biosurveillance value, a multi-dimensional entity, is not properly defined or assessed. Not addressing the entire range of criteria leads to partial evaluations that may fail to convene sufficient support across the stakeholders’ base for biosurveillance improvements.We seek to develop a generic and flexible evaluation framework capable of integrating the multiple and conflicting criteria and values of different stakeholders, and which is sufficiently tractable to allow quantification of the value of specific biosurveillance projects towards the overall performance of biosurveillance systems.

Objective

To describe the development of an evaluation framework that allows quantification of surveillance functions and subsequent aggregation towards an overall score for biosurveillance system performance.

Zika virus was declared an international public health emergency by the World Health Organization on February 1, 2016. With Georgia hosting the world’s busiest international airport and a sub- tropical climate that can support the primary Zika virus vector, Aedes aegypti, and secondary vector, Aedes albopictus, the CDC designated Georgia as a high risk state for vector transmission. Faced with a lack of mosquito surveillance data to evaluate risk of autochthonous transmission and a few counties statewide that provide comprehensive mosquito control, the DPH rapidly scaled up a response. DPH updated existing mosquito surveillance and response plans targeted for West Nile Virus (WNV) and expanded capacity to areas that lacked previous surveillance targeting the Zika virus vector. 

Objective

To describe the Georgia Department of Public Health’s (DPH) mosquito surveillance capacity before and after Zika virus was declared a public health emergency, review and compare mosquito surveillance results from 2015 to 2016, and evaluate the risk of autochthonous vector transmission of Zika virus based on 2016 surveillance data of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. 

To describe the Caribbean Public Health Agency’s (CARPHA) Tourism and Health Information System (THiS), a web-based syndromic surveillance system to increase the capacity of Caribbean countries to monitor the health of visitors and staff in hotels, and detect potential infectious disease outbreaks for early and coordinated public health response.

Vaccination is one of the most successful public health interventions. Despite this, there are a variety of reasons that VPDs continue to be seen in developed countries such as Canada. This analysis describes the recent trends in the burden of disease and mortality associated with VPDs for which publicly funded vaccination programs for infants or children are implemented across the country and for which national surveillance data are available. 

Objective

To describe the recent trends in the burden of disease and mortality associated with vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs).

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) are operating in 49 states and several U.S. territories. Current methods for surveillance of prescription drug related behaviors, include the mean daily dosage of morphine milligram equivalent (MME) per patient, annual percentage of days with overlapping prescriptions per patient, and annual multiple provider episodes for multiple controlled substance prescription drugs per patient that are described elsewhere.1,2 This work builds on these efforts by extending longitudinal methods to prescription drug behavior surveillance in order to predict risks associated with prescription drug use. 

Objective

This study aims to show the application of longitudinal statistical and epidemiological methods for building a proactive prescription drug surveillance system for public health.

Nationally, deaths due to opioid overdose have continually increased for the past 15 years . Deaths specifically related to heroin increased more than four-fold between 2002 and 2014. Hospital inpatient discharge data provide information on non-fatal overdoses, but include a significant lag in reporting time. Syndromic ED visit data provide near real-time identification of public health issues and can be leveraged to inform public health actions on the emerging threat of drug overdose.

Objective

To develop and evaluate syndrome definitions for the identification of acute unintentional drug overdose events including opioid, heroin, and unspecified substances among emergency department (ED) visits in Virginia.

Objective

Wisconsin is leading the way in novel approaches monitoring health outcomes for opioid-related adverse events. This panel will share innovative public health informatics methods that harness various data sources (e.g., Prescription Drug Monitoring Data (PDMP), death, birth and hospitalization data) for population health surveillance. Discussion will include topics on detection of drug abuse and diversion, identifying potential neonatal abstinence syndrome cases, surveillance of substance-related hospitalizations and overdose deaths, and modeling opioid-related mortality risk factors.