A New Strategy for Public Health Surveillance at CDC: Improving National Surveillance Activities and Outcomes

Abstract

Public health surveillance is the cornerstone of public health practice and can be defined as the ". . .systematic, ongoing collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data followed by the dissemination of these data to public health programs to stimulate public health action." 1 Stakeholders in the United States at all levels of government (i.e., federal and state, territorial, local, and tribal [STLT]), in academia and industry, and the general public rely on high-quality, timely surveillance data to detect and monitor diseases, injuries, and conditions; assess the impact of interventions; and assist in the management of large-scale disease incidents.Surveillance data are crucially important to inform policy changes, guide new program interventions, sharpen public communications, and help agencies assess research investments.The public health surveillance enterprise in the U.S. is a long-term partnership that operates through thousands of agencies at the federal and STLT levels.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) generally does not collect public health surveillance information directly, but relies on state and local health departments and other systems to do so.CDC, however, plays an important collaborative role in aggregating, analyzing, and disseminating surveillance data; creating tools for surveillance; providing technical assistance to states and territories; researching surveillance policy; and funding surveillance activities.In the