Description of a school nurse visit syndromic surveillance system and comparison to emergency department visits, New York City.
Am J Public Health
; 104(1): e50-6, 2014 Jan.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24228684
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES:
We compared school nurse visit syndromic surveillance system data to emergency department (ED) visit data for monitoring illness in New York City schoolchildren.METHODS:
School nurse visit data recorded in an electronic health record system are used to conduct daily surveillance of influenza-like illness, fever-flu, allergy, asthma, diarrhea, and vomiting syndromes. We calculated correlation coefficients to compare the percentage of syndrome visits to the school nurse and ED for children aged 5 to 14 years, from September 2006 to June 2011.RESULTS:
Trends in influenza-like illness correlated significantly (correlation coefficient = 0.89; P < .001) and 72% of school signals occurred on days that ED signaled. Trends in allergy (correlation coefficient = 0.73; P < .001) and asthma (correlation coefficient = 0.56; P < .001) also correlated and school signals overlapped with ED signals on 95% and 51% of days, respectively. Substantial daily variation in diarrhea and vomiting visits limited our ability to make comparisons.CONCLUSIONS:
Compared with ED syndromic surveillance, the school nurse system identified similar trends in influenza-like illness, allergy, and asthma syndromes. Public health practitioners without school-based surveillance may be able to use age-specific analyses of ED syndromic surveillance data to monitor illness in schoolchildren.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
School Health Services
/
School Nursing
/
Population Surveillance
/
Nurse's Role
/
Emergency Service, Hospital
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
/
Screening_studies
Limits:
Child
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Country/Region as subject:
America do norte
Language:
En
Journal:
Am J Public Health
Year:
2014
Document type:
Article