Surveillance Coordination for NNDSS Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Enhanced Surveillance for Meningococcal Disease, Varicella, and Acute Flaccid Myelitis

Key Objectives:
The objective of this session is to facilitate a dialogue between public health practitioners at the local, state and federal levels about the newly created NNDSS Vaccine-Preventable Disease (VPD) Surveillance Coordination and Enhanced Surveillance project through the ELC cooperative agreement, which is designed to support and strengthen vaccine-preventable disease case-based and outbreak surveillance.   This discussion will include descriptions of activities for the four required components of the project and will explore strategies for project support and assessment.    

Brief Summary:
The intent of this project is to establish a VPD surveillance coordinator position in every state and large local health department currently supported through the ELC.  The VPD surveillance coordinator will serve as the point of contact for selected VPDs  (including but not limited to measles, mumps, rubella, congenital rubella syndrome, varicella, pertussis, H. influenzae, meningococcal disease, tetanus, diphtheria, invasive pneumococcal disease, paralytic poliomyelitis, and non-paralytic poliovirus infection) and will ensure linkages and communication between epidemiology, immunization, and laboratory partners to support surveillance-related activities and resources.  In addition, this project will provide support to further enhance surveillance specifically for meningococcal disease, varicella, and acute flaccid myelitis.   Expected outcomes of funding support for the NNDSS VPD Surveillance Coordination and Enhanced Surveillance project are:

• Improved linkages between epidemiology, immunization, and laboratory partners
• Improved assessment of surveillance data and activities
• Improved exchange of surveillance data between programs and partners
• Improved educational awareness to health care providers and other public health partners
• Improved surveillance data quality (e.g., completeness of vaccine history and importation, accuracy, geographical coverage, molecular variation)
• Improved timeliness of reporting to NNDSS and associated surveillance systems
• Improved timeliness of:
  • detection of and response to cases, outbreaks, and deaths
  • investigation of cases and outbreaks
  • laboratory testing and maintaining isolates as appropriate for investigation and control
  • response to and implementation of control measures for outbreaks
  • HL7 messaging to enhance standardization and usability by jurisdiction and CDC