A: Our nerdy guest, Dr. Meredith Matone (Scientific Director, CHOP Policy Lab) helped us to understand this concept last week in a Facebook Live Interview.
Here we offer a brief follow up to continue to shed light on the concept of surveillance.
Surveillance is: the early and systematic monitoring of community health data to inform appropriate response to disease emergence and re-emergence. Dr. Matone gave us examples of current surveillance (food-borne illness or influenza). Surveillance can work alongside contact tracing and testing and offers a scalable way to leverage existing systems.
Several recommended resources:
A brief video explanation of Surveillance
Easy to read perspective on syndromic surveillance
Application mentioned by Dr. Matone, COVID-Near You. The app utilizes web and text based information
We learned a great deal about surveillance and hope you did too. Stay safe. Stay sane.
~Aparna
