Surveillance

Competency 4: Define, describe, interpret, and install public health surveillance systems

1. Define surveillance and describe its use in public health
   1. Define surveillance (the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of health data)
   2. Define and describe different approaches to surveillance (active vs. passive, notifiable disease reporting, lab-based, volunteer providers, registries, surveys, information systems, sentinel events, record linkages)
   3. Describe the objectives of surveillance (detection of outbreaks, projection of disease trends, evaluation of interventions, links to services, links to research, education and policy)
   4. List the elements of a surveillance system (such as case definition, population identification, cycle of surveillance, confidentiality, incentives to participation)
2. Determine public health surveillance data quality
   1. List and evaluate the common sources of existing surveillance data at local, state, and national levels
   2. Describe limitations of the use of mortality data (such as comparing two different populations, use of death certificate data)
3. Recognize steps in establishing surveillance systems
   1. Explain the legal basis of notifiable disease reporting
   2. Identify diseases with mandated reporting (state, national, and international levels
   3. Recognize differing time frames for reporting of different diseases
4. Analyze surveillance data
   1. Identify appropriate descriptive measures of disease frequency
   2. List and consider potential confounding factors in analyses
   3. Determine time trends in disease frequency
5. Interpret surveillance data analyses
   1. Identify factors other than actual disease frequency changes that could lead to apparent changes (changes in disease definition, surveillance system protocols, status as notifiable disease, etc.)
   2. Present and summarize data through use of frequency distributions, histograms, summary statistics
6. Evaluate surveillance systems
   1. Identify the CDC list of the attributes of surveillance that can be used to evaluate an existing surveillance system or to conceptualize a proposed system