PHO Rounds: Novel Disease Surveillance Tools for the Next Pandemic

Traditional public health surveillance relies on reporting at the local level of suspected unusual clusters of events, with subsequent investigation and feedback. While comprehensive, this approach often relies on sufficient infrastructure, funding and time. Informal surveillance is a complementary approach that leverages non-traditional data sources and allows the rapid dissemination of information that can be used to guide appropriate public health responses. This seminar will introduce the concept of informal disease event monitoring systems and how this type of data can and has been used to explore communicable disease epidemiological trends among forcibly displaced persons worldwide.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Identify the role of informal disease event monitoring and reporting for public health surveillance of infectious diseases
2. Describe specific applications of informal disease event monitoring systems for outbreak detection
3. Discuss data limitations in real-time epidemic forecasting

Presenters' name: Angel N Desai, MD, MPH