185481 Use of local animal care intake data for disease surveillance: The Orange County experience

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Stephen Walter Klish, MPH , Epidemiology and Assessment, County of Orange, Health Care Agency, Santa Ana, CA
Frances O. Miller, PhD , Epidemiology and Assessment, County of Orange, Health Care Agency, Santa Ana, CA
Pamela Roa Hipp, MPH , Epidemiology and Assessment, County of Orange Health Care Agency, Santa Ana, CA
Elisabeth J. Gonzalez, PhD , Epidemiology and Assessment, County of Orange, Health Care Agency, Santa Ana, CA
Elaine Lukic, DVM , Animal Care Services, County of Orange, Health Care Agency, Orange, CA
David Kieltyka, DVM , Animal Care Services, County of Orange, Health Care Agency, Orange, CA
Objectives: Local health jurisdictions are continually looking for novel methods for improving disease surveillance. This presentation will discuss Orange County Health Care Agency, Epidemiology & Assessment's (E&A) use of their local Orange County Animal Care Services (ACS) electronic animal intake data for monitoring the health of the local community and as a form of syndromic surveillance since 2004. Methods: E&A obtains data set on a regular basis from ACS. The data is then analyzed following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's SAS based Early Aberration and Reporting System methodology as well as an SPSS based Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) methodology. Based on internal protocols, E&A follows up with ACS regarding any aberrations in the data Results: Using these methodologies, we found that a statistically significant increase in the total number of bird intakes as well as dead birds, especially corvids, in 2004 signaled the start of the local West Nile Virus epidemic. Conclusions: Local health jurisdiction's use of animal care and control intake data may be a useful component of an overall disease surveillance system to monitor the health of the local community, especially for zoonotic diseases.

Learning Objectives:
1) Recognize situations where animal care intake data is useful for human disease surveillance 2) Describe two methods for analyzing animal intake data that Orange County has used 3) Discuss successes and challenges encountered in using these data

Keywords: Surveillance, Bioterrorism

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I worked directly with this procedure developing the process with Orange County.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.