Public health surveillance: historical origins, methods and evaluation

In the last three decades, disease surveillance has grown into a complete discipline, quite distinct from epidemiology. This expansion into a separate scientific area within public health has not been accompanied by parallel growth in the literature about its principles and methods. The development...

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Published inBulletin of the World Health Organization Vol. 72; no. 2; pp. 285 - 304
Main Authors DECLICH, S, CARTER, A. O
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Genève Organisation mondiale de la santé 1994
World Health Organization
Subjects
Biological and medical sciences
Communicable Disease Control - history
Confidentiality
Data Collection - methods
Ethics, Professional
Europe
General aspects
History of medicine
History, 15th Century
History, 16th Century
History, 17th Century
History, 18th Century
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
History, Medieval
Humans
Medical sciences
Planification. Prevention (methods). Intervention. Evaluation
Population Surveillance - methods
Public Health - history
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Europe
Evaluation
Review
Methodology
Sanitary surveillance
Case history
Public health
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Summary:In the last three decades, disease surveillance has grown into a complete discipline, quite distinct from epidemiology. This expansion into a separate scientific area within public health has not been accompanied by parallel growth in the literature about its principles and methods. The development of the fundamental concepts of surveillance systems provides a basis on which to build a better understanding of the subject. In addition, the concepts have practical value as they can be used in designing new systems as well as understanding or evaluating currently operating systems. This article reviews the principles of surveillance, beginning with a historical survey of the roots and evolution of surveillance, and discusses the goals of public health surveillance. Methods for data collection, data analysis, interpretation, and dissemination are presented, together with proposed procedures for evaluating and improving a surveillance system. Finally, some points to be considered in establishing a new surveillance system are presented.
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ISSN:0042-9686
1564-0604