Understanding the basic concepts of public health surveillance
- 1Population and Public Health Branch, Health Canada, AL no 1918C3, Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0K9, Canada; Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto; Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada
- 2Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- 3Applied Research Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
- Correspondence to: Dr B C K Choi; Bernard_Choi{at}hc-sc.gc.ca
Public health surveillance has been defined as the ongoing collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to public health practice, closely integrated with timely dissemination of information for intervention. This is analogous to a 24 hour surveillance camera (data collection) under the watchful eyes of guards (data analysis and interpretation) who have telephone access (information dissemination) to the police and firefighters (intervention).
Two unique characteristics differentiate a surveillance system from other data systems, such as surveys, routine records, or …
