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Use of the Web by State and Territorial Health Departments to Promote Reporting of Infectious Disease
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To the Editor: The threat of emerging infections and bioterrorism has heightened the need for timeliness and completeness of disease reporting. However, physicians frequently encounter barriers that undermine notification, including lack of information about what, when, how, or where to report.1-2 Because nearly 80% of US physicians use the Web,3 the Web offers an unprecedented opportunity to facilitate disease reporting. We evaluated use of the Web by state and territorial health departments to promote infectious disease reporting.
Methods
In the summer of 2003, we surveyed state epidemiologists in the 57 health jurisdictions that participate in the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS).4 This e-mail and telephone survey assessed the availability of an up-to-date reportable disease list on the Web and of Web-based reporting for physicians. Additionally, for each jurisdiction's Web site we recorded the presence or absence of critical elements defining why, what, when, how, and where to report diseases, and . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Nkuchia M. M'ikanatha, DrPH, MPH
nmikanatha@state.pa.us
Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Pennsylvania Department of Health
Harrisburg
David P. Welliver, MS, MBA
Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Hershey
Dale D. Rohn, MPH
Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Baltimore
Kathleen G. Julian, MD
Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Ebbing Lautenbach, MD, MPH, MSCE
Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Philadelphia
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