Assessing the surveillance capability of Canada's national health surveys

We assessed Canada's national health surveys as surveillance instruments, with emphasis on comparing the temporal structure of data sets with those generated by the US Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Only the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS) has the BRFSS capability to generate continuous, uniform time series with monthly intervals. These time series can offer substantial extra value for retrospective analysis such as program evaluation in addition to surveillance. Expanding CTUMS is a simple option for providing an ongoing, uniform monthly survey instrument for non-tobacco variables. The Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) will generate monthly data, and could potentially generate useful continuous time series even though surveys at the health region and provincial levels will alternate annually. Reconfiguring the CCHS, or even implementing a provincial surveillance survey based on the BRFSS model are other viable options, but each option has associated tradeoffs or obstacles.