POPM 3240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Disease Surveillance, Public Health Surveillance, Clostridium
13 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
An outbreak refers to an increase, often sudden, in cases of disease above what is expected in the pop. An outbreak refers to a more localized situation in space/time, while epidemic often refers to a more widespread situation. There are several important steps to conducting an outbreak investigation: Steps often happen simultaneously, overlap or even take place in a different order, depending on the unique situation. Steps 1 & 2: determine existence of an outbreak and confirm the diagnosis. There are two main ways an outbreak is detected: community-identified: illness is reported by individuals, physicians or others to public health authorities. Forms of syndromic surveillance (emergency room visits, etc. ) are improving the rate at which outbreaks are being community-identified. Lab-identified: ongoing surveillance of lab isolates by health departments is performed to determine if the observed number of cases exceeds the expected level (lab/death records, disease registries, etc. ). Labs also monitor for unusual or rare strains of common pathogens.
