Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 9, 2025
Visualizing Efficacy of Pesticides Against Disease Vector Mosquitoes in the Field
Published on: March 16, 2019
Improving the Performance of a Syndromic Surveillance Definition for Sexual Violence
Amy Ising1, Lucas M Neuroth, Lubna S Hossain
1Author Affiliations: Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Drs Ising and Waller); Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Mr Neuroth); Division of Hospital Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan (Ms Hossain); and University of Colorado Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado (Dr Kafka).
Context:
Timely and representative data for sexual violence surveillance in the United States are lacking.
Objective:
To address this gap, we aimed to improve the identification of sexual violence in syndromic surveillance emergency department (ED) visit data through evaluation of the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sexual violence surveillance definition (CDC V3) using North Carolina (NC) syndromic surveillance data and development of an enhanced definition (V4).
Design:
We created a gold standard dataset of visits representing incident sexual violence, history of sexual violence, or no sexual violence through manual review, developed an enhanced V4 definition based on this review, and then compared the performance of the CDC V3 and V4 definitions against the gold standard.
Setting:
North Carolina.
Participants:
Emergency department visits in NC, 1/1/2016-6/3/2024.
Main Outcome Measures:
We compared the precision measures (Sensitivity, Specificity, Positive Predictive Value, Negative Predictive Value, and F1) of the CDC V3 and new V4 definitions for sexual violence. We applied both definitions to NC ED visit data for 2019-2023 to compare demographics and crude rates.
Results:
The CDC V3 sexual violence definition proved highly specific. The V4 definition identified a 6% increase in incident sexual violence ED visits compared to the CDC V3 definition, with additional chief complaint search terms and the selective incorporation of triage notes. Trends in patient sex, age group, race, and ethnicity were similar across both definitions. The F1 score showed improvement for the V4 definition compared to the CDC V3 definition, suggesting that it better optimizes the need to comprehensively identify ED visits for sexual violence while minimizing false positives.
Conclusions:
Syndromic surveillance ED visit data provide timely, population-based data on this complex topic. Building upon the CDC V3 definition and incorporating triage notes where available allowed us to develop a more sensitive and accurate surveillance definition for incident sexual violence.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
01:26Principles of Disease Surveillance
01:26Sexually Transmitted Infections
01:18Steps in Outbreak Investigation
01:19Pharmacovigilance
This process, termed pharmacovigilance, aims to detect, evaluate, and minimize harmful effects related to medication use. The data collection for pharmacovigilance depends on spontaneous reporting systems, where healthcare professionals or patients voluntarily report suspected ADRs.
In some cases, there...
01:14SBAR II: Application of SBAR
SBAR Report from a Nurse to a Health Care Provider
S: "Hello, Dr. Smith. This is Jane, RN, from the Med Surg unit. I am calling to tell you about Ms. White in Room 210, who is experiencing increased pain and redness at her incision site. Her recent...
01:22Healthcare Associated Infections II: Preventive Measures
The best practices for preventing healthcare-associated infections include hand hygiene, patient risk...