Part 1 - Descriptive Epidemiology

Public Health Surveillance

Keeping track of the frequency of health problems in a population is essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice, and this information needs to be readily available to those responsible for prevention and control of disease. How is the raw data for this endeavor obtained and evaluated?

Data Sources for Public Health Surveillance and Monitoring the US Population

Today there are many sources of data that are useful for monitoring the health of populations and for exploring how disease frequency changes over time and how it relates to personal characteristics and location (person, place and time). Below is a partial list of examples of possible data sources.

There are many cross-sectional surveys and databases that are periodically conducted, many of which can be accessed from the National Center for Health Statistics.