Dual Lectures: International Health Regulations & Response; Surveillance Systems for Infodemics

Public Health Grand Rounds (PHGR) will continue to promote Preventive Medicine Grand Rounds (PMGR) while our monthly PHGR sessions are on hold. We welcome your questions. Please email us at grandrounds@cdc.gov

Dual Lectures: International Health Regulations & Response; Surveillance Systems for Infodemics

Public Health Grand Rounds (PHGR) will continue to promote Preventive Medicine Grand Rounds (PMGR) while our monthly PHGR sessions are on hold. We welcome your questions. Please email us at grandrounds@cdc.gov

In the first presentation, Esther Kukielka will provide an introduction to how the Emergency and Information and Risk Assessment (HIM) team within PAHO works to improve the agency’s response to public health emergencies of international concern, following the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR).

Esther will present specific examples on the use of IHR and projects where she and the HIM team provided assistance to several countries in the Region of the Americas to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public health systems need to be able to detect and respond to infodemics—outbreaks of misinformation, disinformation, information overload, or information voids. In the second presentation, LCDR Howard Chiou will draw from experiences in infodemic and traditional public health surveillance, and highlight both similarities and unique considerations of infodemic surveillance systems. As transmission of both information and pathogens continue to occur more rapidly in the digital age, sustainable and routine systems must be created to ensure that timely interventions can be deployed for both epidemic and infodemic response.