Alert System for School-based Outbreaks | CDC EID

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Volume 17, Number 2–February 2011
Dispatch
Alert System to Detect Possible School-based Outbreaks of Influenza-like Illness
Pamela Mann, Erin O'Connell, Guoyan Zhang, Anthoni Llau, Edhelene Rico, and Fermin C. Leguen
Author affiliations: Florida Department of Health, Miami, Florida, USA (P. Mann); and Miami-Dade County Health Department, Miami (E. O'Connell, G. Zhang, A. Llau, E. Rico, F.C. Leguen)

Suggested citation for this article

Abstract
To evaluate the usefulness of school absentee data in identifying outbreaks as part of syndromic surveillance, we examined data collected from public schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA. An innovative automated alert system captured information about school-specific absenteeism to detect and provide real-time notification of possible outbreaks of influenza-like illness.

Information about school absenteeism is commonly used as part of syndromic surveillance for detecting disease outbreaks in the United States. For example, health officials from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene evaluated school absentee percentage data for 2001–02 and identified moderate increases in influenza-associated absenteeism (1). However, absence is not always related to illness; thus, understanding why students miss school can be difficult because specific reasons are not usually recorded (2).

The Miami-Dade County Health Department (MDCHD) is Florida's largest county health department and serves the Miami metropolitan area of ≈2.5 million persons. Approximately 350,000 students are enrolled in 436 schools in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools system (MDCPS), which includes public, charter, vocational, and alternative schools. Each school is required to enter students' attendance information daily into an MDCPS database, the Automated Student Attendance Recordkeeping System. MDCHD has access to this database through a secure file transfer protocol that provides file access over a reliable data stream. Since 2007, MDCHD has automatically received these electronic raw data that contain students' demographic and geographic information, which includes gender, race/ethnicity, age, school code, and ZIP code (3). After the emergence of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus in April 2009, MDCHD designed an automated school-based absentee surveillance system (SBASS) at the beginning of the 2009–10 school year. This system had an alert function to monitor trends in absentee activity and potentially link absenteeism with influenza outbreaks. We assessed this innovative SBASS as an adjunct to traditional disease reporting.

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Alert System for School-based Outbreaks | CDC EID

Suggested Citation for this Article
Mann P, O'Connell E, Zhang G, Llau A, Rico E, Lequen FC. Alert system to detect possible school-based outbreaks of influenza-like illness. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2011 Feb [date cited]. http://www.cdc.gov/EID/content/17/2/262.htm


DOI: 10.3201/eid1702.100496


Comments to the Authors
Please use the form below to submit correspondence to the authors or contact them at the following address:

Pamela Mann, Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Epidemiology, 8600 NW 17th St, Ste 200, Miami, FL 33126, USA; email: pamela_mann@doh.state.fl.us