Changing the Way We Talk About Cardiovascular Surveillance

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Changing the Way We Talk About Cardiovascular Surveillance

- Steve Sidney, MD, MPH

- Laura Gordon

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The challenges of “surveillance”

• Public connotation– Spying– Invasion of privacy

• Consequences– Jeopardized public funding– Lack of public interest/fear of surveillance programs

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How do we preserve – and promote the value of –

surveillance programs to the public?

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Proposal: Expand the Lexicon

• Keep “surveillance” when it matters• Expand use of public-friendly synonyms– “Disease tracking”– “Health and disease tracking”– “Health monitoring”

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Some Examples

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In the United States, we use health and disease tracking to:– Measure the quantity of various diseases/health events (such as

heart attacks and strokes) in communities over a period of time.– Measure the quantity of various diseases across the country at

large.

This tracking is critical to helping us determine the impact of these diseases on:

– The public’s overall health– Health among specific groups (such as women, children and

people of certain ethnicities)– The economy

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The information we learn from health and disease tracking can be used to:– Design treatment strategies– Prove the need for public policies that support the

treatment and/or prevention of illness– Spot trends in diseases across certain demographics

and/or geographies– Measure the success of treatment strategies and policies

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Next steps

• Seek feedback from you & other partners• Test with target audiences • Create a plan for introducing/socializing agreed-upon

language

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Plenary VII

CVD Surveillance: Defining the Conversation and Measuring Results

Q and A