A key element in virtually all infectious disease surveillance systems involves the point of contact between the community and the health care system. Motivation - in care-seeking behavior, diagnosis, and reporting diligence – determines the sensitivity, timeliness, and ultimate effectiveness of a surveillance system for effect response and disease control. Curiously, attention to this component is often lacking in efforts to reform or strengthen health information and disease surveillance systems, where more resources tend to be directed toward developing national guidelines, reports, data processing systems, and media such as web-pages, for dissemination.
Our experience is that the most robust and sustainable information systems exist where there is a ‘culture of information’ that extends down to the collection and use of data at the point of data collection (i.e. the community). We present results of efforts to strengthen surveillance and health information for use at the local level, and offer a framework for approaching disease surveillance and HIS strengthening as a community-development and management behavior change challenge rather than as an of technology transfer and introduction.
Learning Objectives: Learning Objectives: Participants will have a better understanding of strategies for building surveillance systems starting at the community level and approaches for enhancing their sustainability.
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.