Epidemiological Surveillance

When infection and disease that are of high public health importance are diagnosed by laboratories and doctors they are required to report this information to local, state, and national agencies such as The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Shaw & Elliott (2012) says, “This permits surveillance (that is, the collection of statistics on the frequency with which the disease occurs), which in turn allows these agencies to identify trends in disease occurrence as well as disease outbreaks” (pg. 158).

-Monitoring the overall health status of the population, this involves the recording of any changes of health in the population and alerting people to potential risks, for example the higher levels of smoking within a population.

Public health surveillance is an ongoing process to protect health information and it is the responsibility of a public health official to protect the privacy of individuals related to health information. There are several laws that apply to the public health agencies while reporting the health information related issues to the State and Federal authorities. Any agency or organization dealing with health information has legal duties to report health related data to the State or Federal Public Health Agencies to protect public health and safety (Association of State and Territorial Health Officials [Astho], 2012).

When the pandemic broke, Dr. Cheever committed to several questionable decisions or courses of action that had or could have had negative impacts on the public health. One of these was when he dispatched Dr. Erin Mears from the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Services (EIS) to investigate on the recent outbreak in Minnesota. The EIS, also referred to as the CDC’s Disease Detectives, serves as the first line of defense and investigation of the agency. It is actually a 2-year training program on applied epidemiology, undertaken by 70 to 80 selected physicians, doctoral-level scientists, veterinarians, and other health professionals (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). EIS Officers are the ones who should be ready to respond in case of outbreak, as Dr. Mears did. EIS Officers have the responsibility of identifying causes of outbreaks, recommending preventive and control measures against them, and implementing strategies to protect

One way that national and international agencies are involved with state and local health departments is the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), which is a nationwide collaboration that allows local, state, territorial, federal, and international health agencies to share information about disease-related issues. Health departments work with healthcare providers, hospitals, laboratories, and others to increase monitoring, control, and prevention of diseases which allows for collection, analysis, and sharing of data and works to increase awareness of potential outbreaks. By interacting with one another, public health agencies are able to provide up-to-date information for their constituents and can even have

It is the study of the causes and risk factors of diseases or health status, and how it is distributed in the population given a geographic location (CDC, 2016). It aids in prognosticating, diagnosing and identifying health risks. It also helps identify community health needs that the FNP can address, initiate programs/solutions, and provide appropriate preventive measures. Knowledge of communicable disease incidence and prevalence will guide an FNP to recommend age appropriate immunizations. For example, the CDC recommends that children from birth to 15 months should receive immunization for Hepatitis B, Rotavirus, DTaP, Hib, MMR, Hepatitis A, Influenza, Varicella, Pneumococcal conjugate, and Inactivate poliovirus (2017). This strategy has significantly reduced the “incidence, prevalence, morbidity, and mortality of many communicable diseases” in Western nations (Ventola, 2016, p. 426). For each U.S. birth group that receives the recommended childhood immunizations, about 20 million illnesses and over 40,000 deaths are prevented, saving about $70 billion of healthcare cost (Ventola, 2016). It will also guide the FNP on what diseases or illnesses her patients should be screened for to diagnose a disease early. This is a secondary prevention strategy. Early diagnosis leads to early treatment and intervention, preventing the natural progression of the disease, avoiding or minimizing the disease’s debilitating effects which

It is important to have systems that are constructed similarly and able to communicate with each other. Syndromic surveillance has been accepted as a way to monitor disease outbreaks and bioterrorism attacks (Chen et al., 2010). According to Henning (2004), “Syndromic surveillance systems seek to use existing health data in real time to provide immediate analysis and feedback to those charged with investigation and follow-up of potential outbreaks.” Additionally, “The fundamental objective of syndromic surveillance is to identify illness clusters early, before diagnoses are confirmed and reported to public health agencies, and to mobilize a rapid response, thereby reducing morbidity and mortality” (Henning, 2004). Evaluation of the success of this type of surveillance can be monitored based on the data reported to and archived by the

AC, is a painful and debilitating condition affecting 2% - 10% of the population (Neviaser and Hannafin, 2010: Cadogan and Mohammed, 2016). Statistical data indicates a higher prevalence in women (59% - 70%), a mean onset age of 50 - 60 years (Cadogan and Mohammed, 2016). The average condition duration presents for 30.1 months but ranges from 1 - 3.5 years (Hand et al, 2008) placing a considerable burden upon individuals and health care services. The non-dominant arm is slightly more affected then the dominant arm (Hand, Clipsham, Rees and Carr, 2008: Levine, Kashyap, Bak, Ahmad, Blaine, and Bigliani, 2007) and the risk of recurrence on the contralateral side within 5 years of the first occurrence is 6%–17%, recurrence in the

Because of my father’s affiliation with the Department of Defense, I lived in a military community overseas in Kaiserslautern, Germany. I spent most my time volunteering on the Medical Surgical floor at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest military hospital outside the United States. One specific patient interaction contributed to my decision to become physician.

The detection of changes of foodborne diseases patterns and variations in the contamination of food is an absolute necessity for monitoring and continuous improvement of food quality and safety. The programs, however must be cost efficient, sensitive and sensible.

According to APTR (No Date), surveillance is the interventional information that includes assessment, policy development, and assurance. It used in estimation the problem degree, resolution of disease spread geographically, epidemics revealing, hypothesis initiation, preventive measure evaluation, and the alteration monitoring in infectious applies.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines epidemiology as, “the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events (including diseases), and the application of this study to the control of disease and other health problems” (Epidemiology, 2015). There are different types of methods that can be used for epidemiological investigations which include: surveillance and descriptive studies, as well as analytical studies (Epidemiology, 2015). Influenza is a viral respiratory illness that is highly contagious (Influenza (Flu), 2015). Since it is so contagious it can cause a pandemic, epidemic, or outbreak causing sporadic cases (Mestrovic, 2014). There are two major types of influenza viruses type A and type B (Mestrovic,

The Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services works closely with the Office of Infectious Diseases when investigating through surveillance for possible domestic and foreign infectious diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1998), “[The objective is a] strong and coordinated system for surveillance and response in the United States and abroad, not only for foodborne disease but for other emerging infectious diseases as well” (p. 6). Infectious diseases are still a major problem, and still is the biggest cause of death worldwide. The CDC and all its departments work together to make the world a safer place to

Written by three doctors, who work with Public Health Informatics Institute, this article appears to be intended for medical professionals as well as the general public. The authors suggest that using EHRs in its fullest capacity, could greatly improve general population health in the US. Information such as influenza outbreaks, communicable diseases, and acute infectious gastrointestinal disease are currently reported to the CDC through use of EHRs. Under HITECH meaningful use laws, only syndromic surveillance, laboratory reporting, and registries are currently reported. The article also discusses the stages of meaningful use in depth and how each needs to be achieved in accordance with HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health). It is suggested that in the future, trending information could help isolate incidences of certain problems/diagnoses to certain geographical locations. This can potentially help practitioners in figuring out a source for such

There are six core functions of epidemiology (Dicker, Coronado, Koo, & Parrish, 2012). The first function is public health surveillance. Public health surveillance can be defined as the method of collecting and analyzing data to better serve the health and well-being of the public efficiently and effectively. For example, if hospitals start seeing more cases of tuberculosis epidemiologists can analyze collected data to find a pattern or commonality among those who were treated. If they find that the majority of patients are from the same geographical location, they may want to concentrate their field investigation efforts in that area. Public health surveillance is important to the study of