Community of Practice Updates

*Slack is a registered trademark and service mark of Slack Technologies, Inc.  **If you have questions about the NSSP CoP, its highly collaborative user groups, the NSSP CoP Slack Workspace (a collaboration platform), or syndromic surveillance, please email syndromic@cste.org.

Policy for Federal Access to NSSP Data

During the November 2022 CoP Monthly meeting, Acting Program Lead Karl Soetebier informed the community of efforts to make NSSP data more accessible and improve collaboration toward common goals.

In December 2022, Soetebier updated site administrators of NSSP’s ongoing work related to data use. He explained how expanded access to NSSP data during the COVID-19 public health emergency enabled innovation in areas such as trend indicators and classification, anomaly detection, and text mining by age and geography. The ability to work this way routinely, outside the context of a public health emergency, is not permitted by the current data use agreement.

To keep community members informed throughout this process, a new Policy for Federal Access to NSSP Data web page will be available in spring 2023. It will contain information on the development and long-term benefits we hope to achieve with the new agreement, so please stay tuned.

Eight New Year’s Resolutions That’ll Improve Your State’s Surveillance

The experts in syndromic surveillance learn from the best—each other. During the 2022 Syndromic Surveillance Symposium, hosted by the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), presenter Michael Coletta (InductiveHealth Informatics) showcased public health successes that can be applied across communities. What better time than now to consolidate these practices into resolutions you can take in 2023 to creatively integrate syndromic data into your surveillance program?

NSSP CoP Monthly Meeting

The National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) Community of Practice (CoP) cancelled its December meeting in lieu of the 2022 Syndromic Surveillance Symposium held December 6–8, 2022. Recordings for previous monthly CoP calls are posted in the Knowledge Repository. We encourage you to join the January call scheduled for the 25th of the month.

Reminders and Announcements

• Session recordings and slides from the 2022 Syndromic Surveillance Symposium, held December 6–8, 2022, are available in the NSSP CoP Knowledge Repository.
• CSTE Annual Conference 2023: Meet, build relationships, and network with colleagues and experts in areas including informatics, infectious diseases, substance use, chronic disease, and injury control. Join more than 2,500 public health epidemiologists from across the nation in workshops, plenary sessions, oral breakout sessions, roundtable discussions, and poster The plan is to hold conference sessions in person; however, CSTE will monitor circumstances and public health recommendations of group gatherings.
  • June 25–29, 2023, in Salt Lake City, Utah
  • To register and learn more, visit the conference site.

Worthwhile Reads on SyS

Between day-to-day surveillance and emergency response activities, 2022 has been quite the year for applying syndromic surveillance (SyS), integrating syndromic data with other sources, and doing so FAST. Thanks to the monthly NSSP Community of Practice meetings—and, of course, symposiums, conferences, and trainings—some of the best applications of SyS are readily available from expert practitioners in our own community. Still, there’s a lot to learn and read for inspiration. A quick web scan found some articles from 2022 that are worthwhile to check out:

Addictive Behaviors Reports: “Analysis of trends and usage of ICD-10-CM discharge diagnosis codes for poisonings by fentanyl, tramadol, and other synthetic narcotics” [Editorial note: NSSP data are used to detect overdose spikes and clusters. Article notes a significant increase in ED visits for synthetic opioid overdoses.]

American Journal of Public Health: “Timing and Trends for Municipal Wastewater, Lab-Confirmed Case, and Syndromic Case Surveillance of COVID-19 in Raleigh, North Carolina”

Health.mil: “Brief report: Using syndromic surveillance to monitor MIS-C associated with COVID-19 in Military Health System beneficiaries” [Editorial note: Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, MIS-C, is a rare but serious condition associated with COVID-19 in which different body parts become inflamed. This brief describes the use of ESSENCE to detect potential cases of MIS-C within a military health system.]

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: Spatial Syndromic Surveillance and COVID-19 in the U.S.: Local Cluster Mapping for Pandemic Preparedness

International Journal of Infectious Diseases: Syndromic surveillance of respiratory infections during protracted conflict: experiences from northern Syria 2016–2021 [Editorial note: During conflict (vaccine interruption, displacement, etc.), Syria used two syndromic surveillance systems to detect outbreaks. One system, set up by the World Health Organization and Syrian Ministry of Health, serves government-controlled areas; the other system serves areas outside government control.]

Journal of Public Health Management and Practice: “An Evaluation of Syndromic Surveillance-Related Practices Among Selected State and Local Health Agencies”

Preventive Veterinary Medicine: “Veterinary syndromic surveillance using swine production data for farm health management and early disease detection”

Public Health Practices: “Protocol to implement a syndromic surveillance survey of COVID-19 in Malawi”

World Health Organization: “Syndromic screening for COVID-19 of travellers crossing land borders: scientific brief, 21 December 2022” [Editorial note: Borders add complexity to intervention design.]