Factors Influencing Community Event-based Surveillance: Lessons Learned from Pilot Implementation in Vietnam

Abstract

Community event-based surveillance aims to enhance the early detection of emerging public health threats and thus build health security. The Ministry of Health of Vietnam launched a community event-based surveillance pilot program in 6 provinces to improve the early warning functions of the existing surveillance system. An evaluation of the pilot program took place in 2017 and 2018. Data from this evaluation were analyzed to determine which factors were associated with increased detection and reporting. Results show that a number of small, local events were detected and reported through community event-based surveillance, supporting the notion that it would also facilitate the rapid detection and reporting of potentially larger events or outbreaks. The study showed the value of supportive supervision and monitoring to sustain community health worker reporting and the importance of conducting evaluations for community event-based surveillance programs to identify barriers to effective implementation.

Community-Based Surveillance in Côte d'Ivoire

“…This finding is similar to other recent studies demonstrating the value of community-based surveillance as an early warning system. [3][4][5]9,10 The study has limitations. The first limitation was heavy reliance on the electronic IDSR database for data analyses.…”

“…A recent study from Vietnam used the following definition for cholera in community-based surveillance: ''any person ‡5 years old with 3 or more rice watery stools in 24 hours, with dehydration severe enough to require admission to hospital or cause death.'' 10 A similar signal definition could be considered by the Ministry of Health to reduce the high number of reports of cases that are not cholera.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Community health workers play an important role in early warning of emerging events by engaging with their communities to detect potential public health events and connecting individuals to health services. [6][7][8][9][10][11] Community health workers are particularly valuable in areas of the world with limited access to health care. 12 A recent World Health Organization (WHO) technical meeting recommended that a strong community-based surveillance program have the following characteristics: It should be integrated in a formal surveillance structure and be actionable and timely, and it should have perceived benefits to the community, well-defined reporting mechanisms, a feedback mechanism, and a monitoring and evaluation process.…”

Twenty Years of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities for Effective Management of Infectious Disease Epidemics

“…A number of CBS systems have been described and have demonstrated their accuracy and sensitivity, their ability to provide more timely measures of disease activity, and their usefulness identifying risk groups, assessing the burden of illness and informing disease transmission models [118][119][120][121]. CBS can be an important component of early warning of emerging events by engaging the communities to detect potential public health events and connecting individuals to health services [3,[122][123][124][125]. In a study in Ivory Coast, following the implementation of community-based surveillance, 5-fold and 8-fold increases in reporting of suspected measles and yellow fever clusters, respectively, have been reported [122].…”

Global Health Security Implementation: Expanding the Evidence Base

“…In this section, Clara et al describe an evaluation of a community event-based surveillance system in Vietnam implemented to improve the early detection of public health threats. 26 The evaluation showed the importance of supervision and monitoring of healthcare workers; it also emphasized the need to conduct surveillance evaluations to identify implementation barriers.…”