Public health surveillance

(This is a new area of work so the contents and look will change as the work develops)

Overview

Surveillance is one of the essential roles of public health, and involves tracking rates of disease and illness within a population, and taking action to address any unexpected variation. Where direct markers of disease (such as diagnosis or mortality) are not available or have a significant time-delay associated with them (for example, lung cancer mortality secondary to tobacco use), factors contributing to the condition (‘determinants’) may be monitored instead (e.g. smoking prevalence).

In October 2008 a workshop took place in London for public health professionals working in the South East and Eastern regions, with the aim of reviewing current surveillance systems and how they may be improved in the future. Following the workshop, a Working Group has been established to further develop the proposals made by delegates at the workshop. Two of the needs which arose were (i) to clearly define the term ‘public health surveillance’ and (ii) to make a list of existing surveillance systems easily available. A report of workshop proceedings is available to download below.

Definition of surveillance

‘Surveillance’ is defined in a number of different ways and often used synonymously with ‘monitoring’. For the purposes of the current project the following definition is used:

Surveillance refers to the systematic, regular collection, analysis and interpretation of data for a given population, to detect changes in patterns of disease or determinants of disease, with action taken if predefined criteria or thresholds are met. Direct indicators of disease, where available, are preferred over proxy indicators. Indicators referring to organisation or process issues (e.g. financial management) would generally not be included.

In particular, this definition would see surveillance as a wider term than monitoring, to encompass both monitoring and taking action when abnormal patterns in data are seen.
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Existing public health surveillance systems

Major public health surveillance systems, based on the definition above, are listed in the tables below, under the headings ‘disease surveillance’, ‘determinant surveillance’ and ‘disease and determinant surveillance’. In practice there may be some overlap between these headings.

We are keen to keep this list up-to-date; if you are aware of any other major surveillance systems in the UK please contact tomporter@nhs.net. Many thanks.

Key Resources

Data and services - Public health surveillance - Surveillance workshop

Date	Title	Format	View
13 Oct 2008	Gillian Schiller, Informing Healthier Choices Talk
20 May 2009	Public health Surveillance: information for action, Final report
13 Oct 2008	Harry Rutter, Surveillance Conference Presentation
13 Oct 2008	John Newton, Surveillance Conference Presentation
	Public Health Surveillance: information for action
20 Nov 2008	Public Health Surveillance: information for action, Summary of conference proceedings

Data and services - Public health surveillance - Disease surveillance systems

Date	Title	Format	View
19 Mar 2009	QSurveillance
19 Mar 2009	Quality and Outcomes Framework 2007/08
19 Mar 2009	Road accident statistics
19 Mar 2009	Survey of Prevalent HIV Infections Diagnosed
19 Mar 2009	Syndromic Surveillance
19 Mar 2009	TB incident and outbreak surveillance
19 Mar 2009	UK Obsetric Surveillance System
19 Mar 2009	United Kingdom Mycobacterial Surveillance Network
16 Mar 2009	M bovis surveillance
16 Mar 2009	Mandatory HCAI reporting
16 Mar 2009	Mortality Data
16 Mar 2009	British Isles Network of Congenital Anomaly
16 Mar 2009	National Drug Treatment Monitoring System
16 Mar 2009	Notification of infectious diseases
16 Mar 2009	Lab reporting of mycobact infections
16 Mar 2009	Local infectious disease outbreaks
13 Mar 2009	HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) data
10 Mar 2009	British Association of Paediatric Surgeons Congenital Anomalies Surveillance System
10 Mar 2009	British Ophthalmological Surveillance Unit
10 Mar 2009	British Paediatric Neurology Surveillance Unit
10 Mar 2009	British Paediatric Surveillance Unit
10 Mar 2009	Child death overview panels - Local Safeguarding Children Boards
10 Mar 2009	Confidential enquiry into maternal and child health
10 Mar 2009	Health and Safety Executive - Health survillance at work
10 Mar 2009	United Kingdom Association of Cancer Registries
Feb 2007	National Study of HIV in Pregnancy and Childhood
Jan 2006	4Child - Four counties database of cerebral palsy, vision loss and hearing loss in children

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Data and services - Public health surveillance - Determinant surveillance systems

Date	Title	Format	View
19 Mar 2009	Chemical Incident Surveillance
19 Mar 2009	COVER vaccine coverage / imms programmes
19 Mar 2009	Drinking Water Inspectorate
19 Mar 2009	Labour Force Survey
19 Mar 2009	National Child Measurment Programme
19 Mar 2009	National Reporting and Learing Service - Patient safety incidents
19 Mar 2009	Royal College of General Practice Weekly Returns Service
19 Mar 2009	Serious Untoward Incidences
19 Mar 2009	UK Air Quality Monitoring Networks
19 Mar 2009	Vaccine in pregnancy surveillance
19 Mar 2009	Weather alerts

Data and services - Public health surveillance - Disease and determinant surveillance systems

Date	Title	Format	View
19 Mar 2009	Annual Population Survey
19 Mar 2009	Families and households in the UK, 2001 to 2010
19 Mar 2009	The Health Survey for England

Data and services - Public health surveillance - International key resources

Date	Title	Format	View
	World health Organisation - Chronic disease and health promotion

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Contacts

Sadhana Bose
Consultant in Public Health Medicine
Sadhana.Bose@sepho.nhs.uk
4150 Chancellor Court
John Smith Drive
Oxford Business Park South
Oxford OX4 2GX

Tel: 01865 334754

Information compiled by Sadhana Bose.
Sadhana.Bose@sepho.nhs.uk
Last review Oct 2009.