Community of Practice Updates

Community Highlights

Have you checked out the NSSP CoP website?

The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) has a new online home for the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) Community of Practice (CoP)! There, you can find information and resources about the community, ways to get involved, monthly call schedules, and much more. Check out the website and bookmark nsspcommunityofpractice.org for future visits.

Participate in Active NSSP CoP Slack Discussions

As a reminder, CSTE supports and moderates the NSSP Community of Practice Slack Workspace, which acts as a communication and collaboration platform for advancing syndromic surveillance practice. Users can easily share information with peers, plan projects, and accelerate data analyses. Reap the benefits of collectively working with other NSSP BioSense Platform users at CDC; other federal agencies; and state, territorial, local, and tribal (STLT) public health departments through engagements facilitated by the channel.

If you want to speak with other syndromic surveillance experts across the country and are affiliated with a federal agency (as an employee or contractor) or STLT health department, this space is designed for YOU! Submit your request to join here.

Note: The NSSP Community of Practice Slack Workspace will not be used to communicate to or with members of the public. As a public federal record, content on the channel is subject to disclosure under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act.

Encourage Others to Join!

We encourage members to share the opportunity to join the NSSP CoP with other syndromic surveillance practitioners. By completing this form, any individual or organization interested in advancing syndromic surveillance can become a member. As a reminder, membership is voluntary, free of charge, and independent of CSTE membership.

Ways to Engage!

Are you looking for ways to participate and engage in NSSP CoP or related syndromic surveillance (SyS) activities? If so, check out these opportunities to participate:

• Submit a SyS Success Story: We want to hear from you! Do you have a story to share with the Community but don’t have the time to write? CSTE can help! Just email your idea to syndromic@cste.org, and they can take it from there.
• Become a Data Quality Subcommittee Co-Chair: The DQ Subcommittee is currently looking for a co-chair. If you’re interested in this position or want to learn more, please email syndromic@cste.org.
• Participate in a CSTE SyS Collaboration Project:
  • Wildfire SyS Project: This workgroup has begun validating two wildfire-related health outcome syndrome definitions.
  • CSTE Non-Fatal Opioid Overdose Position Statement Implementation Guide workgroup: This workgroup is drafting guidance for a position statement that will describe how to use (and combine) data from poison control, emergency departments, hospital discharge diagnosis records, syndromic surveillance, and laboratories.

To learn more or get involved, please email syndromic@cste.org.

NSSP Community of Practice

The March 2021 NSSP CoP call, hosted by the NSSP CoP Syndrome Definition Subcommittee, was about “Mental Health and Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Loren Rodgers (CDC/NSSP) kicked off the call with NSSP updates:

• Suicide trends are increasing: Several states have contacted CDC about an increase in suicide attempts. Action item for the community: Consider sharing data details with NSSP surveillance staff. An Access & Management Center (AMC) data-sharing group, “CDC Data Access for Suicide Attempt,” has been created in the AMC for this purpose. The data-sharing group is for community members who are comfortable sharing line-level data with NSSP and would like assistance with further analysis and reporting.
• The NSSP team is developing journal articles and quick start guides. These will be announced in NSSP Update over the next few months.
• In March 2021, NSSP released a software update to the AMC.

Rodgers concluded the call by asking the community to contact the NSSP Service Desk if they notice issues with AMC performance.

Rosa Ergas (MA) with Zach Stein (ICF contractor/CDC) kicked off the mental health discussion by stating that pandemic response activities have provided an opportunity for the syndromic surveillance community to collaborate with behavioral epidemiologists.

Megha Parikh (MA) and Matt Tumpney (MA) described Massachusetts trends in suicide-related ED visits. Parikh compared three suicide-related definitions: Syndrome Definition Subcommittee’s suicide-related v1; CDC’s suicide ideation v1; and CDC’s suicide attempt v1, which use R code developed by Sara Chornsiter (Maricopa County, AZ). The R code can be accessed here. The R code report captures how the three definitions overlapped and the number of visits captured individually by each definition, common chief complaints, and ICD codes for each definition. Tumpney gave an overview of trends in suicide-related ED visits during the pandemic, including decreased total suicide-related ED visits between March and April 2020, and explained variation in visits across sex.

Lareina La Flair (WA) and Cody Carmichael (WA) described Washington’s Behavioral Health Group, which was convened as the pandemic unfolded last year. The group was tasked with providing weekly situation reports that included syndromic surveillance indicators such as Suicide Attempt v1, Suicide Ideation v1, CDC All-drug v1, CDC Alcohol v1, and Syndrome Definition Disaster-related Mental Health v1. These reports were useful in developing preventive strategies and will inform the state’s upcoming suicide prevention plans.

Kayla Anderson (CDC/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control) and Lakshmi Radhakrishnan (CDC/NSSP) provided the status of mental health syndromes being developed. The new syndromes expand upon the original (developed by the Syndrome Definition Subcommittee) that is currently being used. Ten syndrome definitions are in development: anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, attention disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, trauma-related disorders (including acute stress), disruptive behavioral disorders, eating disorders, and tic disorders. A broad “all mental health” definition is also being developed. These definitions will be released to ESSENCE in the next few months and announced in NSSP Update.

NSSP CoP Core Committee

• Krystal Collier (AZ)—Core Committee Chair
• Yushiuan Chen (Tri-County, CO)—Core Committee Deputy Chair
• MisChele Vickers (AL)—Data Quality Subcommittee Co-Chair; MisChele will be vacating this position soon. We thank MisChele for her many contributions!  If you’re interested in working with others and co-chairing this subcommittee, please email syndromic@cste.org.
• Diksha Ramnani (WI)—Data Quality Subcommittee Co-Chair
• Teresa Hamby (NJ)—Knowledge Repository Curation Subcommittee Chair
• Bill Smith (Maricopa Co., AZ)—Syndromic Surveillance and Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Co-Chair
• Fatema Mamou (MI)—Syndromic Surveillance and Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Co-Chair
• Rasneet Kumar (Tarrant Co., TX)—Syndrome Definition Subcommittee Co-Chair
• Rosa Ergas (MA)— Syndrome Definition Subcommittee Co-Chair
• Natasha Close (WA)—Technical Subcommittee Co-Chair
• Caleb Wiedeman (TN)—Technical Subcommittee Co-Chair

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Data Quality (DQ) Subcommittee

• On the March DQ call, Daniel Chaput (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology) discussed the quality of hospitalization data provided to NSSP. For context, Chaput shared a critical recommendation from the May 2020 white paper titled Data Interoperability and Exchange to Support COVID-19 Containment. This recommendation suggested changing the syndromic surveillance messaging guide to better collect information about COVID-19 severity. Specifically, Chaput asked call attendees if ADT messages for A06 events (“change an outpatient to an inpatient”) could serve as a proxy for disease severity. The remainder of the call discussion focused on the usefulness of such messages for creating actionable data for public health. Call participants indicated their support and discussed how best to move forward.
• The Data Quality subcommittee has a co-chair opening. Please email syndromic@cste.org for details.
• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the DQ Subcommittee here.

Knowledge Repository (KR) Curation Subcommittee

• Check out the newly added content:
  • March 2021 Data Quality Subcommittee Call
  • March 2021 Race and Ethnicity Data Quality Improvement Workgroup Call
  • March 2021 NSSP CoP Monthly Call
• 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 issues with the Knowledge Repository.

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

• In the March 2021 SPHERR call, Bill Smith (Maricopa County, AZ) gave an overview of the new NSSP Community of Practice website and highlighted preparedness resources available in the Knowledge Repository.
• Check out previous call recordings and other resources from the SPHERR Subcommittee here.

Technical Subcommittee

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

If you have questions about the NSSP CoP, its highly collaborative user groups, the NSSP CoP Slack Workspace (a collaboration platform), or syndromic surveillance, please email syndromic@cste.org.