Transgender medicine presents a particular challenge for the development of evidence-based guidelines, due to limitations in the available body of evidence as well as the exclusion of gender identity data from most public health surveillance activities. The guidelines that have been published are often based on expert opinion, small studies, and data gathered outside the US. The existence of gu...

We greatly appreciate the opportunity to comment on this interesting and thought-provoking paper. Dr Fricker has brought up many important issues with respect to biosurveillance, primarily in the very challenging context of syndromic surveillance and other types of public health surveillance with many input data streams. Similar to Dr Fricker, we have backgrounds in industrial statistical proce...

In some high-income countries, public health surveillance includes systems that use computer and information technology to monitor health data in near-real time, facilitating timely outbreak detection and situational awareness. In September 2007, a meeting convened in Bangkok, Thailand to consider the adaptation of near-real time surveillance methods to developing settings. Thirty-five particip...

Public health surveillance is the cornerstone of public health practice. The uses of surveillance include the identification of patterns of health among population subgroups. The assessment of race and ethnicity in public health surveillance is fundamental to the reduction of preventable excesses in poor health among racial and ethnic populations. We review the use of race and ethnic variables ...

hepatitis c virus (hcv) infection is a serious public health concern throughout the world. despite its public health prominence, however, how surveillance systems for hepatitis c should be designed is still a challenging issue especially in developing countries such as iran. establishing a surveillance system needs an ongoing process of case investigation, data collection, analysis of data and ...

Introduction Syndromic surveillance is an alternative type of public health surveillance which utilises pre-diagnostic data sources to detect outbreaks earlier than conventional (laboratory) surveillance and monitor the progression of illnesses in populations. These systems are often noted for their ability to detect a wider range of cases in underreported illnesses, utilise existing data sourc...

At a crossroads, global public health surveillance exists in a fragmented state. Slow to detect, register, confirm, and analyze cases of public health significance, provide feedback, and communicate timely and useful information to stakeholders, global surveillance is neither maximally effective nor optimally efficient. Stakeholders lack a globa surveillance consensus policy and strategy; offic...

In a recent article, Ling et al. hypothesized that following the launch of a campaign for a medical condition, information seeking behavior pertaining to the condition would increase as well [1]. They used data from Google Trends (Google Inc., CA) on 4 different diseases (including Colon Cancer) to conclude that the use of infoveillance (type of public health surveillance based on online conten...

472  Public Health Reports / November–December 2014 / Volume 129 The Executive Perspective column is a regular feature in Public Health Reports by leaders of offices under the Assistant Secretary for Health. In this installment, Drs. Chesley L. Richards, Michael F. Iademarco, and Tara C. Anderson describe the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) new strategy for federally ...

Introduction Medical claims and EHR data sources offer the potential to ascertain disease and health risk behavior prevalence and incidence, evaluate the use of clinical services, and monitor changes related to public health interventions. Passage of the HITECH Act of 2009 supports the availability of standardized EHR data for use by public health officials to obtain actionable information. Whi...