Surveillance

Disease surveillance is the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data in order to detect, control, and prevent health problems. Epidemiologic surveillance is the macroscopic surveillance perspective, carried out primarily by public health agencies on a statewide or nationwide basis. These efforts seek to identify and quantify illness, injury or excessive exposure, and monitor trends in their occurrence across different industry types, over time, and between geographic areas. Medical surveillance, by contradistinction, focuses its surveillance components on the hazards and potential hazards of a particular workplace, company or group of workers.

• Halperin, W., E.L. Baker, and R. Monson. Public Health Surveillance. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992.
• Ordin, DL. "Surveillance, Monitoring, and Screening in Occupational Health." Public Health and Preventive Medicine, 13th ed. Last, J.M. and R.B. Wallace, eds. Stanford, CT: Appleton and Lange, 1992.

Federal-based data

• 14th Annual Joint DOE/EFCOG Chemical Safety and Worker Safety and Health Program (10 CFR 851) Workshop. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Health, Safety and Security.
  • Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource. Provides access to the public-use repository of data from occupational and environmental health studies of workers at DOE facilities and nearby community residents.

Data Sets

Mortality

• Occupational Mortality in Washington State 1950 - 1989. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Publication No. 96-133, (March 1997). Provides occupational and cause-of-death information on 588,090 Washington State male deaths for 1950-1989 and 88,071 female deaths for 1974-1989 and was analyzed using an age and year-of-death standardized proportionate mortality ratio program. A detailed cause-of-death analysis (161 causes) is published for each of 219 occupational categories for males and for each of 68 occupational categories for females.

Morbidity

• Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities. U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Provides data on illnesses and injuries on the job and data on worker fatalities.
• National Health Interview Survey. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics.
  • National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
  • FastStats A to Z
• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Gives access to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the world's largest, on-going telephone health survey system, tracking health conditions and risk behaviors in the United States yearly since 1984.

Methods

Occupational Epidemiology References

General Epidemiology

• Schlesselman, James J., and Paul D. Stolley. Case-Control Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Kleinbaum, David G., Lawrence L. Kupper, and Hal Morganstern. Epidemiologic Research: Principles and Quantitative Methods (Industrial Health & Safety). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 1982.
• McNeil Don. Epidemiological Research Methods. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
• Kelsey J.L., W.D. Thompson, and A.S. Evans. Methods in Observational Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Rothman, K. Epidemiology. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1997.
• MacMahon B. Principles of Epidemiology. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1997.
• Silman AJ. Epidemiological Studies: A Practical Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Occupational Epidemiology

• Sackett D.L., R.B. Haynes, and P. Tugwell. Clinical Epidemiology: A Basic Science for Clinical Medicine. Pennsylvania: Lippincott-Raven Publishers, 1991.
• World Health Organization Publications, European Series No. 20 Epidemiology of Occupational Health. Geneva, 1986.
• Checkoway H, et al. Research Methods in Occupational Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Olsen, J. and Merletti F., Searching for Causes of Work-Related Diseases: An Introduction to Epidemiology at the Work Site. Oxford Medical Publications, 1991.

Environmental Epidemiology

• Bertollini R and Lebowitz MD, eds., Environmental Epidemiology: Exposure and Disease. Lewis, 1996.
• Armstrong, White, Saracci, Principles of Exposure Measurement in Epidemiology. Oxford University Press. New York 1997.
• Talbott EO and Craun FC., Introduction to Environmental Epidemiology. Lewis. 1995.
• Environmental Epidemiology, Volume 1: Public Health and Hazardous Wastes. Committee On Environmental Epidemiology, National Research Council, Washington, DC, 1991.
• Environmental Epidemiology, Volume 2: Use of the Gray Literature and Other Data in Environmental Epidemiology. Committee On Environmental Epidemiology, National Research Council, Washington, DC, 1991.

Epidemiologic Surveillance

• Halperin, W., E.L. Baker, and R. Monson. Public Health Surveillance. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, (1992).
• Ordin, DL. "Surveillance, Monitoring, and Screening in Occupational Health." Public Health and Preventive Medicine, 13th ed. Last, J.M. and R.B. Wallace, eds. Stanford, CT: Appleton and Lange, (1992).