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Click on the pyramid above
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information about each of these surveys.
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The burden of illness pyramid is a model for understanding foodborne disease reporting. This illustrates steps that must occur for an episode of illness in the population to be registered in surveillance.
Starting from the bottom of the pyramid, 1) some members of the general population are exposed to an organism; 2) some of these exposed persons become ill; 3) some of these ill persons seek medical care; 4) a specimen is obtained from some of these persons and submitted to a clinical laboratory; 5) a laboratory tests some of these specimens for a given pathogen; 6) the laboratory identifies the causative organism in some of these tested specimens and thereby confirms the case; 7) the laboratory-confirmed case is reported to a local or state health department. FoodNet conducts laboratory surveys, physician surveys, and population surveys to collect information about each of these steps. This information is used to calculate estimates of the actual number of people who become ill. Other information is used to estimate the proportion of these illnesses transmitted by food. Click here for additional information about these estimates.
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