Disease Surveillance

Public health is the measures taken by the government to prevent ill health and disease. The government monitor health so that they can develop different programmes and legislation to improve the health and well being of the people in the country. They do this by attempting to solve inequalities, so that all people not matter what are able to live a healthy life. There are eight policies to improve today's public health, these are; planning for health

In 1900, the death rate per 100,000 population for influenza and pneumonia (I & P) was 202.2; it was 22.4 in 2003. How much did the death rate due to I & P decline

A way the government control diseases in the population is by planning and evaluating the health and social care provision, they do this by assessing the services that are being provided and see if they are helping problems that take place. It is also important that when infectious diseases have come up, it is a legal requirement that it is reported to the appropriate people, by doing this measures can be put in place to stop them spreading. An example for this is when diseases such as Tuberculosis (TB) and Measles are diagnosed or suspected, the local medical officer is responsible for monitoring the disease and

This strategy involves trying to prevent diseases and to stop them from spreading and being passed on though the community, for example HIV can be controlled by tracking the number of people affected, the government can provide subsidised drugs to people with HIV . Also there is food hygiene measures in restaurants and take away’s to control the spread of food poisoning, for example signs up around the kitchen in food places, and there should be labels with names of what the food is/ingredients on packages, and best before date so you know to chuck it away if it’s out of date. For measles and mumps and rubella,

-Monitoring the overall health status of the population, this involves the recording of any changes of health in the population and alerting people to potential risks, for example the higher levels of smoking within a population.

There are many public sector and not for profit health agencies within the United States health care system. There are health care agencies that are run by the government, Quasi-government and voluntary. The agencies that are Quasi-government are supported by the government but managed privately and there are voluntary health agencies that can be run by private or non-profit agencies, and there are also government run agencies. Government agencies are run by the government and funded through taxes or other government budget appropriations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is example of a government run agency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one of the most important health agencies in the world. The

The entity performs surveillance by monitoring and investigating any health threats that occur. The organization keeps the health care system aware, abreast, and prepared for emergency situations. It also aids the public health departments by offering subsidy and technical assistance. The CDC has a direct effect on the health care system because procedures the facilities implement are from the public health departments who learn from the CDC’s emergency protocols, (CDC, 2012).

An Outbreak Investigation requires preparation and field work. The epidemiologic steps of an outbreak situation entails establishing the existence of an outbreak (are there more cases than expected), verifying the diagnosis, collaborating with laboratories to find causative agent, conducting an active surveillance, which may include additional cases, analyzing data by time, place, and person (when, where, and who), generating a hypotheses, and conducting a case-controlled study, communicating findings, and implementing control and prevention measures. There isn’t a definitive order to conduct the steps of an outbreak investigation. It usually depends on the circumstances of the outbreak (CDC, 2012).

Environmental surveillance can be an important type of surveillance. For example, in monitoring polio, environmental poliovirus surveillance currently supplements acute flaccid paralysis surveillance. What is the objective for environmental poliovirus surveillance? What are the rationales to support the need of this environmental surveillance?

This includes virtually any governmental action needed to control the threat to the population. Therefore, in order to fulfill that responsibility to ensure the public's health state public health authorities could (as they have in the past) temporarily constrain certain civil liberties. They can require private sector participation in public health objectives, shut down potentially harmful industries, destroy contaminated property, deport or prevent the entry of individuals who may infect others, ration supplies, and control the flow of information (Hodge, 2002).

The Constitution distribute public health powers into two categories the federal government and the states (Gostin, 2000). The Federal government, when it comes to public health have the control over taxing, spending, and regulating the activity of buying. Federal public health powers include the authority to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. This control allows the Federal government to gain access to more money, distribute materials, resources, and to continue catch the public's interest (Gostin, 2000). Each individual State have taken on some of this public health power. For example, to help protect, maintain, and promote the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of the people (Gostin, 2000). Public

The 21st Century has seen the healthcare system struggle with challenges such as an increase in chronic conditions, an increase in government spending on public health, and emerging threats such as global health security and antibiotic resistance. On the positive side, more people have gained access to care. To deal with these emerging issues as well as existing challenges, we need an effective public health workforce. The public health has the role of protecting the health of citizens. This could be through health promotion and lobbying for increased access to care. To address the problem of the rise in chronic ailments, public health has a role of creating awareness on chronic conditions, their symptoms and management. This is because these conditions are expensive to treat and drain the resources of patients and their families. Public health should therefore educate the public on the importance of screening and conduct these screening services for early diagnosis and prevention of chronic diseases. Another role of public health in the 21st Century is to provide and use evidence based practice in providing clinical services. This would help in addressing some of the emerging challenges such as antibiotic resistance.

There are six core functions of epidemiology (Dicker, Coronado, Koo, & Parrish, 2012). The first function is public health surveillance. Public health surveillance can be defined as the method of collecting and analyzing data to better serve the health and well-being of the public efficiently and effectively. For example, if hospitals start seeing more cases of tuberculosis epidemiologists can analyze collected data to find a pattern or commonality among those who were treated. If they find that the majority of patients are from the same geographical location, they may want to concentrate their field investigation efforts in that area. Public health surveillance is important to the study of

The world has experienced a total of four pandemics within the twentieth century. These pandemics, as horrific and deadly as they are, have brought so much more positive advances to our health care system and how we prepare for biological threats. Although we are in the twenty-first century and we have advanced so far in healthcare, there is still the possibility of a deadly pandemic.

The CDC has resources that set up a plan for preventing and controlling emerging diseases. Prevention and control of communicable diseases is focused on elimination, eradication. Also, primary, secondary, and tertiary preventions and their role in prevention and control of communicable diseases is important to know. Teaching about immunizations when discharging a child from a hospital admission is an example of primary prevention.