Disease surveillance system types and the steps of an outbreak investigation tested at the introductory public health level.
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- What is passive surveillance?
- A system where health facilities report cases to public health authorities on their own initiative.
- What is active surveillance?
- A system where public health staff regularly contact providers or labs to actively search for cases.
- What is a key trade-off of active surveillance compared to passive surveillance?
- It is more complete and timely but requires more staff time and resources.
- What is a major limitation of passive surveillance?
- It tends to underreport cases because reporting depends on providers remembering to report.
- What is sentinel surveillance?
- Monitoring disease through a selected subset of reporting sites chosen to represent a larger population.
- Why use sentinel surveillance instead of monitoring every site?
- It lowers cost and workload while still detecting overall trends.
- What is syndromic surveillance?
- Monitoring patterns of symptoms, such as emergency room chief complaints, rather than confirmed diagnoses.
- What is the main advantage of syndromic surveillance?
- It can detect a possible outbreak earlier than waiting for lab-confirmed diagnoses.
- What is laboratory-based surveillance?
- A system that identifies cases from reports of positive laboratory test results.
- What is a notifiable disease?
- A disease that health care providers and labs are legally required to report to public health authorities.
- In an outbreak investigation, what is the first step?
- Prepare for field work.
- What is the second step of an outbreak investigation?
- Establish the existence of an outbreak.
- How is an outbreak defined?
- An occurrence of more cases of a disease than normally expected in a given area or group over a period of time.
- What is a disease cluster?
- An aggregation of cases in a given time and place, without yet confirming it exceeds the expected number.
- What is the third step of an outbreak investigation?
- Verify the diagnosis.