Week 8: Principles and Application of Surveillance Flashcards
What is surveillance?
Continuous collection of data for analysis and interpretation to inform public health action.
What are the purposes of surveillance?
- Detection of outbreaks and providing appropriate interventions to those in contact with certain diseases
- Monitor trends in disease and identify emerging threats
- Inform infection control and prevention programmes and evaluate public health policy
- Inform decisions about prioritisation of limited health resources
- Monitor disease outcomes to inform interventions
List the principles of surveillance systems.
- Data collected must be justified by the contribution that is made to protecting the health of the population
- The design of a surveillance systems must address an activity or question
- The method of data capture, cleaning, analysis and reporting should be done in a consistent way
- Sufficient resources must be available for surveillance
- Transparent quality assurance processes should be in place
- The output of any surveillance system is based on the questions it needs to address
- Analysis and reporting of data must be transparent, accurate and in a format which informs action
- The surveillance system must work within the legal framework for collecting, storing and using an individual’s data
What is the formula for prevalence?
Number of cases/population x 100
What is the formula for incidence risk?
Number of new cases of disease in a specified period of time / number of disease-free persons at the beginning of that time period
What is sentinel surveillance?
The monitoring of rate of occurrence of specific diseases and conditions through a voluntary network of doctors, laboratories and public health departments with a view to assess the stability or change in health levels of a population.
List the advantages of sentinel surveillance.
- Cheaper to run
- More flexible
When are sentinel surveillances used?
When a sample may accurately represent the whole population or when testing the whole population would be wasteful.
What is syndromic surveillance?
Surveillance identifying diseases where the organism is not known and identifying syndromes and conditions associated with environmental factors such as air pollution or contaminated water.