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Article: Notifiable Diseases
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Public Health
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NOTIFIABLE DISEASES
The collection of relevant data pertaining to disease occurrence, when collated, analyzed, and reported, leads to a public health action. This is known as Public Health Surveillance. Without a resultant action, the information gathered is archival and not satisfying a public health function. Disease control and prevention activities cannot be effectively and efficiently accomplished without analyzing occurrence data, which helps direct the development of these activities. The initial data may not be adequate for accomplishing the subsequent public health action and thus additional data may need to be collected or a research project initiated. All of our efforts in ...