ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: SURVEILLANCE
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Annotated Bibliography for Public Health Surveillance Andresen, E. M., Diehr, P. H., & Luke, D. A. (2004). Public Health Surveillance of LowFrequency Populations. Annual Review of Public Health, 25(1), 25-52. Problems and approaches for situations with insufficient surveillance data using examples of race and ethnic minority groups are presented. The need for this work is established from the authors’ experience of achieving confidence in data, which is difficult to attain because small ethnic group numbers can cause margins of error. The intended audience includes those involved in health surveillance activities. Advantages and disadvantages of using traditional data sources and surveillance methods are discussed. Data collection improvements are recommended for sampling strategies, field methods, and survey logistics. Also included are data analysis recommendations: spatial smoothing with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), small area estimation, exact statistical methods, and/or provider profiling methods. This article is valuable because it’s comprehensive and provides insight into the advantages and disadvantage of surveillance strategies. It’s a great go-to article for help on determining how to enhance existing surveillance methods and how to make the most of existing data sets. A specific set of steps for definitive corrective action is not included, but the authors say this is not the intended purpose. The article is meant to encourage steps for revising existing methods or incorporating new strategies to better results.
Lazarus, R., Yih, K., & Platt, R. (2006, September 19). Distributed Data Processing for Public Health Surveillance. Biomed Central Public Health, 25(1), 235-246. Advantages and disadvantages of using a distributed processing model for routine, automated syndromic surveillance are presented. In the authors’ system, which supports the National Bioterrorism Syndromic Surveillance Demonstration Program (NDP), data processing is distributed to data collection sites rather than being performed at one central location, allowing personal health information (PHI) to be pre-processed remotely under the security and control of the data provider. The intended audience of this article includes those who need information on how to develop syndromic surveillance systems, regardless of worldwide location. This article is valuable because it demonstrates a feasible system in which PHI is protected concurrently with on-going syndromic surveillance activities. While this is the second publication on this specific topic, the authors feel strongly that their system is a valuable alternative surveillance system option that warrants more in-depth explanation and debate. The article is straightforward and honest in terms of presenting the system’s advantages and disadvantages. It presents a good case study of a system that addresses PHI privacy concerns and should be one of several consulted on the topic of syndromic surveillance.