Copyright © 2005 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
BOOK REVIEWS |
Monitoring the Health of Populations: Statistical Principles and Methods for Public Health Surveillance
Public Health Program, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84108
Edited by Ron Brookmeyer and Donna F. Stroup
ISBN 0-19-514649-2, Oxford University Press, New York, New York (Telephone: 800-451-7556, Fax: 919-677-1303, Website: http://www.oup-usa.org), 2004, 370 pp., $65 (hardcover)
Using epidemiologic methods to monitor health patterns in populations has been a long-standing focus in public health. Monitoring the Health of Populations provides an up-to-date consideration of many topics associated with modern efforts designed to meet this focus. In the first chapter, editors Ron Brookmeyer and Donna F. Stroup, along with coauthor William D. Kalsbeek, provide a framework for considering public health surveillance. Within this framework they address the uses of public health surveillance systems, the role of statistical reasoning in utilizing public health surveillance data, and the scope of data available for public health surveillance. They conclude the chapter with an extensive list of data sources available for public health surveillance activities. What follows this introductory chapter is a collection of public health surveillance methods and statistical techniques germane to population-based monitoring of health written by leading experts on these respective topics.
Written for readers with a foundation in public health surveillance, this text covers topics ranging from methodological considerations to guidelines for specific approaches when conducting surveillance. Examples of the methodological topics include spatial and temporal factors when conducting surveillance, detection of disease clustering, Bayesian approaches to hierarchical modeling of surveillance data, and ecologic inference problems that arise in the analysis of surveillance data. Specific approaches covered include using surveys to conduct public health surveillance, public health data to evaluate screening programs, surveillance-based approaches for infectious disease outbreak investigations, Web-based monitoring methods, and capture-recapture methods to address issues related to completeness of reporting.
One of the strengths of this text is the multifaceted way in which topics are addressed. The presentation of these topics is a combination of brief backgrounds into these topics, insightful discussion of key issues, examples that provide practical illustrations of the topics covered, appropriately detailed coverage of mathematical formulae that show the basis for many of the methods described, and examples of programming code to make application of methods proposed accessible to the reader. The examples provided throughout the text illustrate the range of types of disease that are monitored through public health surveillance methods. In addition to examples focusing on the incidence and prevalence of communicable and chronic disease, also included are such topics as behavioral and risk assessment surveillance.
Public health surveillance is a field that has been influenced by both long-standing public health approaches and newly devised methods. Evolution in this field is due to the combination of newly identified needs for population-based health monitoring (e.g., bioterrorism) and development of methods that can be applied to both old and new problems (e.g., geographic information systems). The chapters in this text address a range of such topics in this field and, if this text is to remain current, will likely need updating as new developments occur.
The editors of this text appear to have chosen to exclude a basic consideration of public health surveillance in order to maintain the focus on select advanced topics. Readers without a foundation in the basic principles of public health surveillance and relevant statistical methods may find it necessary to supplement their study of this topic with other materials as means of accessing the full content of this text. Considered in this context, this volume is a timely addition to the field of public health surveillance. The editors are to be commended for assembling it for use by academic and practicing public health scientists engaged in population-based health monitoring.
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