BACKGROUND Drinking water contamination, with the capability to affect large populations, poses a significant risk to public health. In recent water contamination events, the impact of contamination on public health appeared in data streams monitoring health-seeking behavior. While public health surveillance has traditionally focused on the detection of pathogens, developing methods for detecti...

Studies in a variety of countries have shown increases in the prevalence of overweight among children in recent years. These increases have given rise to concern about children's health and well-being. The terminology used in these studies varies considerably. However, whatever the terminology used, such studies are generally based on weight [expressed as body mass index (BMI), a measure of wei...

Invasive pneumococcal disease causes substantial morbidity and mortality in Africa. Evaluating population level indirect impact on adult disease of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) programmes in infants requires baseline population incidence rates but these are often lacking in areas with limited disease surveillance. We used hospital based blood culture and cerebrospinal fluid surveillance...

Background: The outbreaks of foodborne diseases is a major health problem and occur daily in all countries, from the most to the least developed. This study is the first report of foodborne outbreaks in Iran that carried out from 2006 to 2011. Methods:  A retrospective, longitudinal study carried out using foodborne disease national surveillance system data from 2006-2011, which have been re...

Results Initially, medical officers from multiple types of government hospitals in India were expected to report AIDS cases, including deaths. However, this reporting mechanism was inadequate, complicated by many disparate types of reporting units with incomplete and delayed reports. Therefore AIDS case reporting has been replaced by HIV case reporting from the 4532 Integrated Counseling and Te...

OBJECTIVE Sedentary behaviour (SB) has distinct deleterious health outcomes, yet there is no consensus on best practice for measurement. This study aimed to identify the optimal self-report tool for population surveillance of SB, using a systematic framework. DESIGN A framework, TAxonomy of Self-reported Sedentary behaviour Tools (TASST), consisting of four domains (type of assessment, recall...

Hypertension affects one third of adults in the United States (1) and is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke (2). A previous report found differences in the prevalence of hypertension among racial/ethnic populations in the United States; blacks had a higher prevalence of hypertension, and Hispanics had the lowest use of antihypertensive medication (3). Recent variations in geograph...

An analysis of the ecological association between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and syphilis was undertaken using joint mapping modelling based on data from South African national HIV and syphilis sentinel surveillance surveys carried out between 2007 and 2009. The syphilis prevalence, taken as proxy for sexual behaviour and increased HIV transmission, was first used with health distri...

BACKGROUND Sedentary behavior is related to obesity, but measures of sedentary behaviors are lacking for adults. The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Sedentary Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ) among overweight adults. METHODS Participants were 49 adults for the 2 week test-retest reliability study (67% female, 53% white, mean age = 20) and 401 overweight wo...

BACKGROUND Reliable health metrics are crucial for accurately assessing disease burden and planning interventions. Many health indicators are measured through passive surveillance systems and are reliant on accurate estimates of denominators to transform case counts into incidence measures. These denominator estimates generally come from national censuses and use large area growth rates to esti...