New York University Diseases Surveillance System Discussion

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The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use surveillance as an ongoing systematic monitoring, processing, and distribution of data that is geared towards improving human health by maintaining, preventing, and controlling diseases for public health. There are two primary types of surveillance, passive and active. Active surveillance is the process of actively carrying out surveillance in health care facilities to routinely identify and report cases. Whereas, passive surveillance is a process that depends on a large network of healthcare workers to regularly collect and distribute data to enforce the intervention of diseases, such as sexual transmitted diseases (STD) and food and drug (FDA) information. Some strength of surveillance is passive surveillance being inexpensive and easy to develop, initiate, and utilized. Passive surveillance allows for international comparison, because various countries use the same system of reporting, thus, resulting in intervention methods distributed urgently in-case of outbreaks (Celentano & Szklo, 2019; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019).

The gaps to this system are the dependency on those who provide information not having additional funds, resulting in underreporting and lack of accurate and completed reports. Additionally, due to a small number of cases to prevent underreporting, local outbreaks might be missed, which can turn into epidemics. It can be difficult to monitor and provide control and prevention of areas that are geologically challenged. Also, reports might be underreported or unusable due to lack of advancement in technology in underdeveloped countries. These gaps occur because the system tries to make reporting simple and easy, which made room for underreporting (Celentano & Szklo, 2019).

A challenge to global coordinating surveillance across multiple countries is technology. If an underdeveloped country is reporting on a case about a new disease and they have lack of laboratory technology/techniques that can detect the diseases, the country might not be able to evaluate the properties of the diseases appropriately, which make their report unusable. Additionally, if the health professionals lack appropriate training or knowledge to conduct investigation and report findings, then the report will be unusable. Poor communication in reporting data due to the language barrier is also a factor (Celentano & Szklo, 2019; Groseclose & Buckeridge, 2017). Agencies and government can improve surveillance by providing mandatory training sessions in languages and knowledge for individuals who partake in surveillance. For countries with a lack of resources and technology for surveillance, a partnership with those countries to advance their technology and resources would be beneficial for the world in controlling and preventing pandemics.

Reference

Celentano, D. D., & Szklo, M. (2019). Gordis epidemiology (6th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier. ISBN-13: 9780323552295

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS). Retrieved from https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss/

Groseclose, L.S., & Buckeridge, L.D. (2017). Public health surveillance systems: recent advances in their use and evaluation. Annual Review of Public Health, 38, 57-79. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031816-044348

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