Community of Practice Updates

2020 NSSP CoP Election Results

The 2020 National Syndromic Surveillance Program Community of Practice (NSSP CoP) elections were held earlier this summer. Participants in NSSP, the NSSP CoP, and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) want to formally congratulate newly elected 2020–2022 NSSP CoP Core Committee Chair Krystal Collier (AZ) and Core Committee Deputy Chair Yushiuan Chen (Tri-County, CO). We look forward to working with Krystal and Yushiuan during the next two years.

The community also thanks Amanda Dylina Morse (WA) for serving as deputy chair on the Core Committee for the past two years and Fatema Mamou (MI) for running in the elections.

2020 Syndromic Surveillance Symposium

The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP), will host the NSSP Community of Practice’s (CoP) 2020 Syndromic Surveillance Symposium virtually. It is tentatively scheduled for the week of October 19.

The symposium will provide a forum for the syndromic surveillance community to exchange experiences, best practices, and ideas in a broad range of areas including data sharing, syndrome development, data quality, and analytic methods. Attendees will learn about the latest methods and topics related to syndromic surveillance practice, share their thoughts about future NSSP CoP activities, and discuss ideas for building syndromic surveillance capacity at the state, local, and national levels. The targeted audience for the event will comprise epidemiologists, NSSP site administrators, syndromic surveillance coordinators, and epidemiology and laboratory capacity health information system leaders.

CSTE will share a registration link via WebEx once the symposium dates are finalized. If you have questions, please email  syndromic@cste.org.

2020–2022 Core Committee Virtual Planning Meetings

The NSSP CoP Core Committee hosted virtual planning meetings on August 5 and 12, 2020. The intent was to convene NSSP CoP Core Committee members to discuss how the NSSP Community of Practice can best achieve its mission to “advance syndromic surveillance practice by leveraging the expertise and resources of its members to strengthen public health surveillance capabilities nationwide” from 2020 through 2022. The Core Committee members developed four goals:

1. Build syndromic surveillance expertise and capacity,
2. Integrate syndromic surveillance into everyday public health practice,
3. Promote the utility and application of syndromic surveillance, and
4. Collaborate and share data.

To best meet these goals, Core Committee members developed the following activity buckets: tools, data sharing, promoting, and integrating. The Core Committee members developed a road map and prioritized activities for the NSSP CoP to accomplish during the next two years.

We encourage you to get involved. To join the NSSP Community of Practice, please email syndromic@cste.org.

Community Highlights

NSSP Community of Practice

• The August 2020 NSSP CoP monthly call’s trending topic highlighted the use of data visualization tools to understand the COVID-19 pandemic. Tri-County’s Yushiuan Chen and Callie Preheim shared Colorado’s experience creating a dashboard for their COVID-19 data to share with internal and external audiences, specifically within ESSENCE and Tableau. MisChele Vickers (AL) presented on Alabama’s COVID-19 data using Tableau dashboards and visualizations. Additionally, Loren Rodgers (CDC) highlighted NSSP efforts to meet 2020 milestones, most notably, to have emergency departments from all states submitting data to NSSP by the end of the year. View the meeting recording here.
• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the NSSP Community of Practice (CoP) here.

NSSP CoP Core Committee

• The NSSP CoP Core Committee hosted virtual planning meetings on August 5 and 12, 2020. The committee revised the 2020–2022 NSSP CoP goals, developed a master road map, and prioritized activities for the CoP to implement in the next two years. Click here for more details.
• The NSSP CoP Core Committee continues to meet monthly to discuss ongoing projects, priorities, and needs of the syndromic surveillance community.
• If you have a topic for Core Committee consideration, please reach out to the appropriate core committee member:
  • Krystal Collier (AZ)—Core Committee Chair
  • Yushiuan Chen (Tri-County, CO)—Core Committee Deputy Chair
  • MisChele Vickers (AL)—Data Quality Subcommittee Chair
  • Teresa Hamby (NJ)—Knowledge Repository Curation Subcommittee Chair
  • Bill Smith (Maricopa Co., AZ)—Syndromic Surveillance and Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery (SPHERR) Co-Chair
  • Zach Faigen (NC)—SPHERR Co-Chair
  • Rasneet Kumar (Tarrant Co., TX)—Syndrome Definition (SD) Subcommittee Co-Chair
  • Rosa Ergas (MA)—SD Co-Chair
  • Natasha Close (WA)—Technical Subcommittee (TC) Co-Chair
  • Caleb Wiedeman (TN)—TC Co-Chair

Data Quality (DQ) Subcommittee

• On the August 2020 DQ call, David Swenson (NH) described initial acuity (severity indicator) investigation and best practices. Swenson shared New Hampshire’s local syndromic surveillance system’s approach to detecting severity in COVID-19 patients and its applicability to other public health topics (e.g., opioid use). Additionally, participants were polled on their practices for determining race and ethnicity data completeness and validity.
• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the DQ Subcommittee and Urgent Care Workgroup here.

Knowledge Repository (KR) Curation Subcommittee

• This month’s additions to the Knowledge Repository include:

• • August 2020 NSSP CoP monthly call (Using Data Visualization Tools to Understand the COVID-19 Pandemic)
  • July 2020 Ad Hoc Meeting (R for Biosurveillance Call: NSSP Coronavirus Surveillance State Report R Demo)
  • August 2020 Data Quality Subcommittee call
  • Syndromic Surveillance Training Resources
• Do you have syndromes, resources, or anything else related to syndromic surveillance that you would like considered for addition to the NSSP CoP Knowledge Repository? If so, please email syndromic@cste.org.

• Email syndromic@cste.org if you have any issues with the Knowledge Repository.

Overdose Surveillance (OS) Subcommittee

• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the OS Subcommittee here.

Syndrome Definition (SD) Subcommittee

• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the SD Subcommittee here.

Syndromic Surveillance and Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery (SPHERR) Subcommittee  

• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the SPHERR Subcommittee here.

Technical Subcommittee

• The next Technical Subcommittee call is scheduled for October 1, 2020.
• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the Technical Subcommittee here.