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Speaking Points
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•Routine surveillance is the ongoing systematic collection of specified
data in order to monitor a disease or health event
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•There are certain diseases for which all cases must be reported to
public health authorities as mandated by law. These are called notifiable diseases, and this process is often
referred to as mandatory surveillance
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•There is a short list of notifiable diseases for which worldwide data
are collected by the World Health Organization as per the Organization’s
International Health Regulations. This list includes HIV/AIDS, SARS,
smallpox, and other international quarantinable diseases of global impact
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•The Division of Public Health Surveillance and Informatics of the CDC
has a longer list of Nationally Notifiable Infectious Diseases. This list is revised periodically, and
reporting to the CDC by the states is voluntary. Data on selected notifiable
diseases are published weekly in MMWR, as well as in the annual summary
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•However, reporting at the state level is mandated by law. Each state’s
list of notifiable diseases varies slightly, but tend to overlap with the
CDC’s Nationally Notifiable Infectious Diseases list
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•Local healthcare providers, medical laboratories, health care
facilities, administrators, health officers, and veterinarians must report
all cases of these specified diseases to their local public health
departments, who in turn must report aggregate data to the state public
health department
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•Disease reports from health care providers constitute the basis for
effective public health prevention and intervention efforts, and are critical
to maintaining public health
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