Premium
The role of surveillance in the hierarchy of prevention
Author(s) -
Halperin William E.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0274(199604)29:4<321::aid-ajim8>3.0.co;2-r
Subject(s) - intervention (counseling) , element (criminal law) , medicine , public health , public health surveillance , disease surveillance , hierarchy , hazard , government (linguistics) , environmental health , risk analysis (engineering) , medical emergency , pathology , nursing , political science , linguistics , chemistry , philosophy , organic chemistry , law
Surveillance is the collection, analysis, and dissemination of results for the purpose of prevention. Surveillance tells us what our problems are, how big they are, where the solutions should be directed, how well (or poorly) our solutions have worked, and if, over time, there is improvement or deterioration. Surveillance is essential to successful sustained public health intervention for the purposes of prevention. Surveillance sytems must be tailored to the specific disease or injury that is to be prevented. Surveillance should not be limited to the occurrence of death, disease, or disability. Public health is a multilevel cascade of activities involving recognition, evaluation, and intervention. Public health should include elements of experimentation as well as field implementation with evaluation. Surveillance is the mechanism to modify any element in the cascade based upon that element's contribution to prevention or lack thereof. Any element in the causal or intervention pathway is appropriate for surveillance as long as the monitoring of the element is useful in improving the prevention system. These elements include the occurrence of hazard and intervention as well as disease, death, or disability. Examples will be provided that demonstrate the roles of surveillance in the recognition of new diseases, the evaluation of the persistence of recognized problems, the estimation of the magnitude and trends of public health problems, and the provision of information to motivate intervention. (This article is a US Government work and, as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.) © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.