OasisLMS

This webinar provides an overview of modern public health surveillance, including the structure and function of the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) and key challenges in disease reporting. Participants will explore recent advancements such as electronic laboratory reporting (ELR), electronic case reporting (eCR), and wastewater-based surveillance, and examine how these innovations are shaping the future of surveillance practice. By the end of this webinar, residents will be able to: 

* Describe the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) and it's role in public health surveillance. 

* Discuss emerging surveillance approaches, including electronic laboratory reporting (ELR), electronic case reporting (eCR), and wastewater-based surveillance.

* Explain key challenges associated with disease reporting, including issues of timeliness and completeness.

* Identify emerging challenges and future directions in public health surveillance.

Dr. Sharon McDonnell is a public health and preventive medicine specialist with expertise in epidemiology and infectious disease outbreaks and surveillance. During the COVID pandemic she developed and directed a statewide system to implement community-based health equity programs with the Maine Health Commissioners office. She is currently a faculty member with The Maine Health Maine Medical Center Leadership in Preventive Medicine fellowship program in the Division of Community Health and Preventive Medicine. In 2014-2016 she worked with CDC and CSTE as part of the international Ebola response in Liberia.

She graduated from the USCD Medical school and was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the US CDC and finished her Preventive Medicine Residency there. As Chief of the International health Branch with the CDC she directed international health training, research, and surveillance including the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) program.

Prior to CDC Dr. McDonnell worked with the World Health Organization as a health scientist specializing in training program and materials development. Dr. McDonnell worked with WHO and nonprofit agencies in community-based care in Afghanistan and Pakistan and then with the Global Program for AIDS in Africa and Geneva Switzerland.

Gib Parrish completed medical school at UCLA in 1974 and a residency in laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Washington in 1982. He then worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1982 to 2002, where he devoted his time to environmental health problems, public health surveillance, improving mortality data, assisting state health departments with public health assessment activities, and improving national and state health information systems.
Since retiring from CDC, Dr. Parrish has worked on various population-health information-related projects, including a distance-learning course on population health information; book chapters on public health surveillance for the CDC and Oxford Press; and a book for Oxford Press on health statistics, which he co-edited with Daniel J. Friedman and Edward Hunter. He has also consulted on projects for CDC, U.S. DHHS, RWJF, NCVHS, and CSTE, dealing with community health assessment and associated indicators, community health improvement, population health information systems, the dissemination of data via the Internet, and the potential use of data from electronic health records for electronic vital registration systems.
From 2013–2020, Dr. Parrish taught introductory epidemiology to MPH students at UNE and UNH. During 2016–2023, he consulted on CDC & CSTE’s Reportable Condition Knowledge Management System, which identifies and evaluates potential cases of reportable conditions using data from electronic health records. From 2018–2025, he provided technical assistance to CSTE in their review of standardized surveillance position statements.
Dr. Parrish currently lives in Yarmouth, Maine.