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ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2012. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
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ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

Enhanced Surveillance during the Democratic National
Convention, Charlotte, NC
Lana Deyneka*1, Amy Ising2 and Meichun Li2

1North Carolina Division of Public Health, Raleigh, NC, USA; 2University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Objective
To describe how the existing state syndromic surveillance system

(NC DETECT) was enhanced to facilitate surveillance conducted at
the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina
from August 31, 2012 to September 10, 2012.

Introduction
North Carolina hosted the 2012 Democratic National Convention,

September 3-6, 2012. The NC Epidemiology and Surveillance Team
was created to facilitate enhanced surveillance for injuries and ill-
nesses, early detection of outbreaks during the DNC, assist local pub-
lic health with epidemiologic investigations and response, and
produce daily surveillance reports for internal and external stake-
holders. Surveillane data were collected from several data sources,
including North Carolina Electronic Disease Surveillance System
(NC EDSS), triage stations, and the North Carolina Disease Event
Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT). 

NC DETECT was created by the North Carolina Division of Pub-
lic Health (NC DPH) in 2004 in collaboration with the Carolina Cen-
ter for Health Informatics (CCHI) in the UNC Department of
Emergency Medicine to address the need for early event detection
and timely public health surveillance in North Carolina using a vari-
ety of secondary data sources. The data from emergency departments,
the Carolinas Poison Center, the Pre-hospital Medical Information
System (PreMIS) and selected Urgent Care Centers were available
for monitoring by authorized users during the DNC.

Methods
Within NC DETECT, new dashboards were created that allowed

epidemiologists to monitor ED visits and calls to the poison center in
the Charlotte area, the greater Cities Readiness Initiative region and
the entire state for infectious disease signs and symptoms, injuries
and any mention of bioterrorism agents. The dashboards also included
a section to view user comments on the information presented in NC
DETECT. Data processing changes were also made to improve the
timeliness of the EMS data received from PreMIS.

Results
The DNC dashboards added to NC DETECT streamlined the

workflow by placing all syndromes and annotations of interest in one
place, with the date ranges and locations already pre-selected. Graphs
in the dashboards could be easily copied and pasted into situation re-
ports. The prompt development of these user-friendly tools provided
effective surveillance for this mass gathering and ensured timely con-
trol measures, if necessary.

Conclusions
Syndromic surveillance systems can be enhanced to provide de-

tailed, specific surveillance during mass gathering events. Elements
that facilitate this enhancement include strong communication be-
tween skilled users and the informatics team, in order to minimize
the burden placed on the surveillance team system users, data sources
and system developers during the event. The visualizations devel-
oped as part of these new dashboards will be leveraged to provide

additional tools to other NC DETECT user groups, including hospi-
tal-based public health epidemiologists and local health department
users.

Keywords
dashboards; enhanced surveillance; Democratic National Convention

Acknowledgments

1.Stephanie Griese, MD, MPH Lieutenant Commander, US Public Health
Service EIS Officer, CDC, Communicable Disease Branch NC DPH
2. Aaron Fleischauer, PhD, MSPH,Commander, US Public Health Serv-
ice,Career Epidemiology Field Officer (CEFO),Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention (CDC),Communicable Disease Branch NC DPH
3. Jennifer MacFarquhar, RN, MPH, CIC,Career Epidemiology Field Of-
ficer,Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,Communicable Disease
Branch NC DPH
4. Grace Oguntebi, MPH CDC/CSTE Applied Public Health Informatics
Fellow, Communicable Disease Branch NC DPH

References

1.Joseph S. Lombardo, Carol A. Sniegoski, Wayne A. Loschen, Matthew
Westercamp, Michael Wade, Shandy Dearth, and Guoyan Zhang Pub-
lic Health Surveillance for Mass Gatherings Johns Hopkins APL
Technical Digest, Volume 27, Number 4 (2008)

2.Kaiser R, Coulombier D. Epidemic intelligence during mass gatherings.
Euro Surveill. 2006;11

3.Ising A, Li M, Deyneka L, Vaughan-Batten H, Waller A. Improving syn-
dromic surveillance for nonpower users: NC DETECT dashboards.
Emerging Health Threats Journal 2011, 4: 11702 - DOI:
10.3402/ehtj.v4i0.11702

*Lana Deyneka
E-mail: lana.deyneka@dhhs.nc.gov

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e190, 2013