A model for rapid, active surveillance for medically-attended acute gastroenteritis within an integrated health care delivery system

Mark A Schmidt, Holly C Groom, Allison L Naleway, Christianne Biggs, S Bianca Salas, Kayoko Shioda, Zachary Marsh, Judy L Donald and Aron J Hall

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: Background: This study presents a novel methodology for estimating all-age, population-based incidence rates of norovirus and other pathogens that contribute to acute gastroenteritis in the United States using an integrated healthcare delivery system as a surveillance platform. Methods: All cases of medically attended acute gastroenteritis within the delivery system were identified from April 1, 2014 through September 30, 2016. A sample of these eligible patients were selected to participate in two phone-based surveys and to self-collect a stool sample for laboratory testing. To ascertain household transmission patterns, information on household members with acute gastroenteritis was gathered from participants, and symptomatic household members were contacted to participate in a survey and provide stool sample as well. Results: 54% of individuals who met enrollment criteria agreed to participate, and 76% of those individuals returned a stool sample. Among household members, 85% of eligible individuals agreed to participate, and 68% of those returned a stool sample. Participant demographics were similar to those of the eligible population, although minority racial/ethnic groups were somewhat underrepresented in the final sample. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the feasibility of conducting acute infectious disease research within an integrated health care delivery system. The surveillance, sampling, recruitment, and data collection methods described here are broadly applicable to conduct baseline and epidemiological assessments, as well as for other research requiring representative samples of stool specimens.

Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201805 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 01805&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0201805

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201805

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().