Poison Control Center--based syndromic surveillance for foodborne illness

Area of Science:

• Public Health Surveillance
• Epidemiology
• Environmental Health

Background:

• Early detection of foodborne disease outbreaks is crucial for public health.
• Poison Control Centers (PCCs) collect data on various health-related calls, including potential foodborne illnesses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the utility of a Poison Control Center (PCC) data collection system for the early detection of foodborne disease outbreaks.
• To assess the overlap between PCC-reported foodborne illness calls and laboratory-confirmed cases reported to a county health department.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of PCC database calls from January 1 to March 31, 2000, for gastrointestinal symptoms indicative of foodborne illness.
• Comparison of PCC call classifications with a predefined diarrhea/gastroenteritis syndrome.
• Evaluation of PCC calls by ZIP code, age, sex, and symptom onset date against laboratory-confirmed cases reported to the county health department.

Main Results:

• Independent review confirmed general agreement with PCC call classifications.
• Only one potential match was identified between PCC calls and county health department-reported cases.
• PCC calls were found to be largely non-duplicative of cases evaluated by the county health department.

Conclusions:

• PCC data represents an independent dataset from traditional public health reporting.
• PCC data shows potential as a valuable supplement to existing surveillance systems for early foodborne disease outbreak detection.
• Findings support the development of collaborative prospective surveillance systems integrating PCC data.