Surveillance: The Role of Observation in Epidemiological Studies

Public health surveillance is the corner stone of public health practice and is critical for improving population health. Public health surveillance is the continuous, ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of relevant health data, which play key role in planning, implementing, and evaluating public health policies and practices as well as disseminating information needed for disease prevention and control. Surveillance data provide useful information to assess burden of health outcomes and prioritize public health actions, prevent spread of disease, and inform decision making. This chapter will explain the benefits of public health surveillance. This chapter will detail: (1) the types and process of public health surveillance, (2) surveillance data sources and approaches to public health surveillance, (3) significance and relevance of surveillance in public health practice, and (4) describe the elements of a public health surveillance system. The chapter will compare public health surveillance to epidemiologic research.