Surveillance Webinar: Overview of Public Health Surveillance Systems-Overview of Public Health Surveillance Systems Recording

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The webinar, part of ACPM's National Education Curriculum for Preventive Medicine Residents, focuses on public health surveillance systems. With over 90 residents participating, the session is led by Dr. Miriam Alexander, alongside Gib Parrish, a former CDC physician, and Sharon McDonald, an expert in international health surveillance. The program covers an introduction to public health surveillance, its history, key concepts, and U.S. surveillance systems.<br /><br />Surveillance is defined as continuous observation aimed at disease control. Historically, it began with monitoring infectious diseases at ports and evolved to encompass both communicable and non-communicable diseases, behavioral risks, and environmental factors. Purposes include detecting epidemics, tracking trends, guiding public health action, and evaluating interventions.<br /><br />Different surveillance types are explained, including passive (health departments receive reports), active (health officials actively collect data), sentinel site (selected reporting sites), and syndromic (symptom-based for early outbreak detection). The importance of case definitions, data sources, analysis, dissemination, and system evaluation is emphasized.<br /><br />The presenters highlight challenges such as under-reporting and the fragile nature of surveillance chains relying on cooperation between healthcare providers and health departments. A discussion addresses designing new surveillance systems, prioritizing data sources based on the disease's characteristics and available reporting infrastructure, using COVID-19 as an example.<br /><br />The session concludes by inviting participants to continue discussions in a breakout Zoom meeting for deeper engagement and feedback.

Keywords

public health surveillance

preventive medicine residents

disease control

surveillance types

epidemic detection

data sources

system evaluation

COVID-19 surveillance

healthcare reporting