Importance of Public Health-Surveillance, Data and Measurements

Discussion Forum

Discussion Forum
Identify a public health concern that interests you. Examples of such a concern  MERS cove. Describe what data would be important to know about this concern and how studying public health would be beneficial in addressing it. What types of surveillance methods do you think would be most effective to help contain the situation and why?

 

Embed course material concepts, principles, and theories, which require supporting citations along with at least one scholarly, peer-reviewed reference in supporting your answer. 

 

Use Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines.

 

Importance of Population Health
Population health can be defined as an approach focused on the interconnected circumstances and factors influencing the health of a specific group, identifying patterns of occurrence, and applying knowledge to develop and implement policies to improve the health of this group (Falk, 2016).

Population Health Management–A Primer
This video discusses the basic techniques used to manage the overall health and well-being of a certain group of people, or population.
Although population health is important to public health, it is different. Population health focuses on various subgroups and patterns of determinants, which include such things as the environment, genetics, behaviors, and healthcare. Determinants will be discussed in greater detail in Module 7. Public health focuses more on the health of society as a whole (Falk, 2016).

Disparities in health are a reality. Diseases can vary from nation to nation, or even within nations, based on social or environmental factors. Population health is important because while it makes sense to apply some initiatives to everyone, other measures should be applied to specific, high-risk groups for the best outcomes (Weil, 2016). By focusing on groups more prone to certain ailments, interventions can be targeted to change behaviors and other factors influencing disease. The objective is to prevent the problem from arising rather than treating the health condition (Marteau, Hollands, & Kelly, 2015).

 

Public Health Data and Measurements

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls for a level of health for all individuals that allows them to lead socially and economically productive lives. It is recognized, however, that an individual can have an illness but still continue to lead a productive life (Turnock, 2016).

It is important to monitor public health conditions continually, as they are variable and constantly changing. Governmental and nongovernmental entities use data to measure health loss due to disease, injury, and risk factors. Once this information is obtained, evidence-based policy can be implemented, and healthcare systems can be designed to account for the identified health issues. Data can also be used to determine whether interventions already in place are working or if they need to be revised.

Importance of Population Health

 

Measuring Health
Commonly used indicators of health often measure disease and mortality as opposed to health. Mortality data is easy to obtain. Morbidity data, such as illness and injury, is more difficult to gather. The most common types of measurements are “crude mortality, age-specific and age-adjusted mortality, life expectancy, and years of potential life lost (YPLL)” (Turnock, 2016).

Crude mortality measures death within the entire population regardless of age distribution. The increasing numbers of older citizens in many communities, however, requires the use of age-adjusted mortality rates that look at the entire picture of death and disease. Age-specific mortality deals with individuals in a certain group. For example, this could be a range such as five years old and younger. Infant mortality estimates the rate of death within the first year of life; in a given year, it is the number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births (Turnock, 2016).

 

Life expectancy is the calculation of the average age of death of a certain population. For example, the following chart indicates the life expectancy at birth in Saudi Arabia since 1960. As you can see, the life expectancy at birth in 1960 was 46. In 2014, it was 74. You can also compare this data to other countries in the region and the world at the World Bank website.

 

Technology for Surveillance
“Public health surveillance is the continuous, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health-related data needed for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice” (WHO, 2017). It can be used in a multitude of ways. For example, it could be used to warn against disease outbreak, track the impact of vaccinations, or provide information for developing policies and procedures to reduce tobacco use.

 

The following video provides a brief explanation of public health surveillance, including how it is used, the different types, and characteristics of a good surveillance system:

 

Surveillance–A Brief Overview
This video discusses the general elements of a public health surveillance.
This week’s discussion question asks you to identify a public health concern that interests you. Which of the surveillance types discussed in the video could be leveraged to explore this concern?
The following figure is a conceptual framework for public health surveillance.

 

Centers for Disease Control, 2012
Public health surveillance provides information to describe the distribution and burden of negative health situations, prioritize public health activity, monitor public health safeguards, and identify possible emerging conditions impacting health (Groseclose & Buckeridge, 2016).
Click on the following to explore the goals of public health surveillance:

Results in Surveillance in Saudi Arabia
In 2013, the MOH partnered with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation to create and distribute a baseline household survey, the Saudi Health Interview Survey (SHIS), to gather data related to disease, health behaviors, and risk factors. It included data related to tobacco use, diet, physical activity, general and functional health status, access to and utilization of healthcare, oral health, history of chronic conditions, medications for chronic conditions, physical and biochemical measurements, and more (MOH & IHME, n.d.).

Take a moment to review a sample of the SHIS results.
Systematic collection of disease prevalence is critical in Saudi Arabia, where data collection in some regions may be harder than others. For example, the availability of data on caries depends on the number of dental schools in a region (Al-Ansari et al., 2019). A systematic and centralized surveillance system assures more accurate public health data. Accurate data is important because it informs the number and types of resources that need to be allocated to address the needs of the population.

An example of population health surveillance at work in Saudi Arabia includes the Saudi Genome Project (SHGP), which has a mission to identify the genetic basis of disease spread in the Saudi population. For this example, the population segment are families in Saudi Arabia infected with hereditary diseases. The SHGP was officially launched in December 2013 and has more than 11,000 DNA samples stored and categorized in a database to monitor genetic changes in the population. As changes persist, environmental and other determinants can be analyzed to identify the determinants’ impact on genetics and, in turn, to improve health (Rasooldeen, 2016).