Public
Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Program
Disease Detection and Investigation Use these resources to develop tools specific to
enhancement and improvement of disease detection and surveillance during
a public health emergency.
Surveillance
Systems
An Educational Sheet: Monitoring
Community Health Status for Emergency Preparedness
This is a four-page
educational guide targeting epidemiologists, disease control and
emergency preparedness directors, and information technology professionals
on the importance of disease surveillance and the need for the right
tools to help assess data accurately and in a timely manner.
MMWR Article on a Framework for Syndromic Surveillance
Syndromic surveillance systems are becoming increasingly common in
health departments. These systems represent a substantial improvement
in the timeliness of ascertainment of community health status. For
the value of such systems to be realized, protocols are needed for
review and analysis of the findings that these systems produce. Establishment
of a framework for evaluation and response to syndromic surveillance
data will facilitate the implementation of these systems and standardization
of procedures for validation of system findings. Careful development
of an evaluation and response framework should be undertaken to assess
whether use of syndromic surveillance systems requires excess work
to distinguish between statistical anomalies and important public
health events.This paper, Syndromic
Surveillance on the Epidemiologist's Desktop: Making Sense of Much
Data puts forward recommendations for such frameworks.
Outbreak Investigation
An Educational Sheet: Preparing for Outbreak Investigations
This is an educational
guide for local public health agencies to help outline issues
in preparing staff for outbreak investigations.