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Syndromic

Description

In 2017, FL Department of Health (DOH) became one of thirty-two states plus Washington, D.C funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the ESOOS program. One of the objectives of this funding was to increase the timeliness of reporting on non-fatal opioid overdoses through syndromic surveillance utilizing either the emergency department (ED) or Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data systems. Syndromic case validation is an essential requirement under ESOOS for non-fatal opioid-involved overdose (OIOD). FL's ESOOS program conducted OIOD validation and quality monitoring of EMS case definitions, using data from FL's Emergency Medical Services Tracking and Reporting System (EMSTARS). We examined measurement validity with OIOD cases identified from FL's statewide hospital billing database, FL Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA).

Objective: Assess the validity of Florida (FL) Enhanced State Opioid Overdose Surveillance (ESOOS) non-fatal syndromic case definitions.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

The Border Infectious Disease Surveillance (BIDS) program was established in 1999 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Mexico Secretariat of Health, following mandates from the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and the U.S.-Mexico Border health association to improve border surveillance. The BIDS program is a bi-national public health collaboration to create an active sentinel-site surveillance of infectious disease among the U.S.-Mexico border. It is a collaborative effort between Local, State, Federal, and International Public Health agencies throughout both countries in the border region. This project is aimed at using the best aspects of both countries surveillance system.

 

Objective

To establish and maintain an active binational sentinel hospital-site surveillance system. To enhance border region epidemiology and laboratory infrastructure.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

People usually celebrate holidays by inviting family and friends to have food at home, or by gathering and eating at restaurants or in other public venues. This increased exposure to food with a common source can create conditions for outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses. Holidays can also be targeted by bioterrorists who seek to maximize physical damage, psychological impact, and publicity around dates of patriotic or religious significance. They might aim at contaminating food and water supplies, especially with CDC-defined category B agents that can cause diseases such as salmonellosis, shigellosis, cholera, crytosporidiosis, as well as infections with Escherichia coli O157:H7 and the Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens. Hence, there is a need to quantify whether gastrointestinal illnesses increase around holidays. This can also help determine a baseline of the incidence to which future holiday periods should be compared to. This research does not focus on specific reportable diseases. That will be the purpose of forthcoming research. Instead, ED visits with gastrointestinal symptoms are used to leverage the capability of syndromic surveillance for early detection.

Objective

To quantify Emergency Department (ED) visits with gastrointestinal symptoms during Federal holidays in Miami-Dade.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

In 2004, the Marion County Public Health Department (MCPHD), which serves a county population over 890,000, began using a real time syndromic surveillance system, ESSENCE (Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics) to assist in detecting possible disease outbreaks. Today, about 1600 emergency department visits occur daily in Marion County's 14 emergency departments. Epidemiologists from MCPHD have contributed to the city's Extreme Temperature plans for the last few years. While most of the previous increases in heat related illnesses in Marion County have been attributed to prolonged heat exposure in connection with local auto races, the county had not activated the county wide emergency response plan in several years. From Tuesday, July 19 through Friday, July 22, 2011 the Marion County Extreme Temperature plan was put into action in response to several days of a high heat index.

Objective

To evaluate the usefulness of utilizing real time hospital emergency department chief complaint data to estimate counts of patients presenting at emergency departments with heat related illness during the July 2011 Heat Wave in Indianapolis.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

The VA has employed ESSENCE for health monitoring since 2006 [1]. Epidemiologists at the Office of Public Health (OPH) monitor the VA population at the national level. The system is also intended for facility-level monitoring to cover 152 medical centers, nearly 800 community-based outpatient clinics (CBOC), and other facilities serving all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. For the entire set of facilities and current syndrome groupings, investigation of the full set of algorithmic alerts is impractical for the group of monitors using ESSENCE. Signals of interest may be masked by the nationwide alert burden. Customized querying features have been added to ESSENCE, but standardization and IP training are required to assure appropriate use.

Objective

The objective was to adapt and tailor the alerting methodology employed in the Electronic Surveillance System for Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE) used by Veterans Affairs (VA) for routine, efficient health surveillance by a small, VA headquarter medical epidemiology staff in addition to a nationwide group of infection preventionists (IPs) monitoring single facilities or facility groups.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

In the last decade, the scope of public health (PH) surveillance has grown, and biosurveillance capacity has expanded in Duval County. In 2004, the Duval County Health Department (DCHD) implemented a standalone syndromic surveillance (SS) system which required the manual classification and entry of emergency department (ED) chief complaints by hospital staff. At that time, this system, in conjunction with other external systems (e.g. CDC ILInet, FluStar, NRDM) were used to conduct surveillance for health events. Recommendations from a 2007 ISDS panel were used to strengthen surveillance within Duval County. Later that year, the Florida DOH moved to a statewide SS system and implemented ESSENCE which has been expanded to include 1) ED record data from 176 hospitals (8 within Duval County); 2) Reportable disease case records from Merlin; 3) Florida Poison Information Network consultations; and, 4) Florida Office of Vital Statistics death records (1). ESSENCE has subsequently become a platform for rapid data analysis, mapping, and visualization across several data sources (1). As a result, ESSENCE has improved business processes within DCHD well beyond the initial scope of event detection. These improvements have included 1) expansion of the ability to create visualizations (e.g. epi-curves, charts, and maps); 2) reduction in the time required to produce reports (e.g. newsletters, media responses); 3) reduction in staff training needs; and 4) augmentation of epidemiology processes (e.g. active case finding, emergency response, quality improvement (QI)), and closing the PH surveillance loop.

Objective

This paper reviews the evolution of biosurveillance in Duval County, FL and characterizes the subsequent improved execution of epidemiology functions as a result of the implementation of the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) system.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

The CDC's BioSense Program receives near real-time health care utilization data from a number of sources, including Department of Defense (DoD) healthcare facilities from around the globe and non-federal hospital emergency departments (EDs) in the US, to support all-hazards surveillance and situation awareness. Following the tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011, the BioSense Program modified its surveillance protocols to monitor: 1) injuries and possible radiation-associated health effects in Japan-based DoD facilities and 2) potential adverse health effects associated with the consumption of potassium iodide (KI), a salt used to prevent injury to the thyroid gland in the event of radiation exposure, among persons attending participating EDs in the US. We present the findings from that enhanced surveillance.

Objective

To demonstrate the utility of the BioSense Program for post-disaster response surveillance.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

A case study presented at the November 2010 Iowa Annual Swine Disease Conference for Swine Practitioners detailed increases in STB lesions beginning January 2010 [1]. Producers were informed of the problem by their swine processing facility. Tissue samples from affected producers were culture-positive for Mycobacterium avium. In the spring of 2010, USDA Veterinary Services (VS) began monitoring weekly ADRS STB carcass condemn data after a VS Staff Officer was made aware of unusual increases in STB condemns in another region. By June 2010, STB condemn rates in both of the affected areas decreased to typical seasonal levels; however, beginning January 2011 rates again rose beyond baseline seasonal highs, exceeding those seen in the 2010 outbreak.

Objective

This paper characterizes a regional outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) in market swine by combining local swine producer-based information on condemned stock at slaughter with geographically broader FSIS Animal Disposition Reporting System (ADRS) data. This study aims to obtain summary information on anomalous swine TB (STB) condemns at slaughter, compare critical outbreak time frames between outbreak areas, and identify the geographical spread of abnormally high STB condems.

Submitted by elamb on
Description

Singapore's syndromic surveillance programmes include the monitoring of polyclinics and emergency departments (ED) attendances for acute diarrheal illness, acute respiratory infections, influenza-like illness, acute conjunctivitis and chickenpox.

Objective

We evaluated these syndromic surveillance systems for its representativeness, usefulness and data quality and identified areas for improvement.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on
Description

Comparison of heat-related health effects across regions or among different syndromic surveillance systems is problematic due to the lack of a standardized heat-related syndrome definition. While a national standard for common heat-related syndromes would facilitate data comparisons, local customization of syndromes to adjust for unique public health events or characteristics is often necessary to optimize use of syndromic surveillance data.

Objective

To determine differences in case detection using different syndrome definitions for heat-related health effects.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on