Surveillance Flashcards

1
Q

What are the components of public health?

A
  1. Health protection
  2. Disease & injury prevention
  3. Population health assessment
  4. Health promotion
  5. Disaster response
  6. Health surveillance
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2
Q

What is public health surveillance?

A

Health surveillance is the ongoing,
systematic use of collected data of health-related events to guide public health action
- Continuous watch for any known diseases emerging and re-emerging diseases

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3
Q

Name the surveillance processes?

A
  1. data collection
  2. collation (organizing)
  3. analysis
  4. interpretation
  5. dissemination followed by action
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4
Q

Name 6 health related events?

A

– Infectious diseases
– Zoonotic diseases
– Chronic diseases
– Injuries
– Exposure to toxic substances
– Health promoting and damaging behaviours

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5
Q

What events need surveillance?

A

events of public health importance
1. Affects many people (how is this determined)
2. Require large expenditures
3. Severe diseases that affect a few people but cluster in time and place
4. Severe diseases that might be “imported” from other countries - emerging diseases
5. Diseases that are now rare but may re-emerge
6. Preventability (what levels of prevention)

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6
Q

What are the objectives of public health surveillance?

A
  1. Guide immediate action for cases of public health importance
  2. Measure burden of disease, identification of populations at high risk, new, emerging and re- emerging health concerns
  3. Monitor trend of burden of disease including detection of epidemics or pandemic
  4. Guide the planning, implementation and evaluation of disease control programs
  5. Evaluate public policy
  6. Prioritize the allocation of health resources
  7. Provide a basis for epidemiological research
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7
Q

Attributes of an Ideal Public Health
Surveillance System?

A

Simplicity, flexibility, data quality,
acceptability, sensitivity, positive/negative predictive value, representative, timeliness,
stability, usefulness, integrated
- However, efforts to improve some attributes might affect other attributes

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8
Q

Name the 4 surveillance methods?

A
  1. routine or passive
  2. active
  3. sentinel
  4. emergency
  5. serological and virological surveillance
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9
Q

What is routine or passive surveillance method?

A

– mainly depends on people visiting facilities
– data is collected from each individual visiting facility

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10
Q

What are the problems with routine or passive surveillance methods?

A
  1. Facility-based data is not representative of community
    level-data (cons of hospital vs PHC-based data)
  2. Only basic demographic and disease-specific data is collected
  3. Not very effective in disease control
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11
Q

What is an active surveillance method?

A

– Deliberate search for disease-specific data in the community (used in control programmes)
– Suspect cases +/- contacts sent to health facility for further tests

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12
Q

What are the problems with active surveillance methods?

A
  1. Extremely expensive
  2. Difficult to apply on a large scale
    – ineffective for infectious diseases affecting regions
  3. Only possible with community participation
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13
Q

What is sentinel health surveillance?

A

– data collected from selected facilities, nationally or regionally, located in areas with different socio-demographic or geographical characteristics
– Well-trained and supervised staff collect reasonably detailed data

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14
Q

What are the problems with sentinel health surveillance?

A
  1. expensive
  2. data may not be representative, especially for diseases where health seeking behaviour is poor
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15
Q

What is an emergency surveillance method?

A

– Ad-hoc surveillance set up during an outbreak
– Combines active and passive surveillance
* Suspected cases and contacts kept under observation
– Has a limited time-frame

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16
Q

What are the problems of emergency surveillance methods?

A
  1. Reactionary “fire fighting strategy”
  2. Fairly expensive
17
Q

What is serological and virological surveillance?

A

– Conducted in specific reference laboratory on anonymous routinely- collected blood samples
– Usually employed when disease prevalence has declined to very low level levels

18
Q

What are the problems with serological and virological surveillance?

A

Data may not be representative

19
Q

What are the types of data sources?

A
  1. Existing data (e.g., census, registries,
    treatment statistics, HMIS)
  2. New data (e.g., focus groups,
    population health surveys, mapping)
    - Weigh the pros and cons of different
    measures
20
Q

How do you measure the validity of notification data?

A
  1. Do the data really measure what we want to measure?
  2. Are the yearly number of notified cases equal to the incidence of the disease?
  3. Can any observed changes over time be a true change in underlying disease incidence?
21
Q

What are the possible biases in data collection?

A
  1. Attendance patterns
    - Media reports, distance, cost etc
  2. Diagnostic methods
  3. Screening
  4. Reporting propensity
22
Q

What Support Do We Need to Enhance Surveillance Activities?

A
  1. Management support
  2. Technology support
23
Q

Describe Management Support for
Surveillance?

A
  • Upgrade and strengthen staff skills
  • Include epidemiological capacity in
    accreditation standards and job descriptions
  • Collaborate with universities and colleges
  • Support professional networking
  • Recruit and retain staff with expertise
  • Recruit content facilitators
24
Q

Describe Technological Support for an
Surveillance?

A
  • Computer and internet access
  • Easy access to appropriate software
  • Commitment to high quality data collection and timely reporting
25
Q

What is Integrated Disease Surveillance
and Response (IDSR)?

A

The purpose of IDSR is to improve the ability of districts to detect and respond to outbreaks of priority infectious diseases with well-known and available interventions

26
Q

What are the specific goals of IDSR?

A
  1. Strengthen district-level surveillance and response for priority diseases
  2. Integrate surveillance with laboratory support, and
  3. Translate surveillance and laboratory data into specific and timely public health actions.
27
Q

What are the priority diseases?

A

Cholera, Diarrhea with blood, HIV/AIDS, Measles, Meningitis, TB, Neonatal tetanus, Polio