Chapter One
Introduction: Spatial and
Syndromic Surveillance for
Public Health
Andrew B. Lawson and Ken Kleinman
1.1 WHAT IS PUBLIC HEALTH SURVEILLANCE?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define public health
surveillance as:
the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data
essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice,
closely integrated with the timely dissemination of these data to those who need
to know. The final link of the surveillance chain is the application of these data to
prevention and control. A surveillance system includes a functional capacity for
data collection, analysis, and dissemination linked to public health programs.
(Thacker, 1994)
It is clear from this that a broad definition of surveillance is implied and ... read full excerpt from Spatial and Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health ebook
