International Society for Disease Surveillance
Committees
Conference – Board Representative: Farzad Mostashari
This committee will work with organizing chairs to develop strategies for the focus of current and future conferences. Decisions will be made regarding conference timing and location, need for workshops, budget and membership of advisory committee. The Society committee will coordinate efforts with the program chair of the conference but will not interfere with scientific content and peer-reviews.
Website – Board Representative: William Lober
This committee will oversee the design, content and technical implementation of the syndromic.org website, including managing the budget and ensuring the website is maintained. The committee chair will solicit content for the website from the rest of the committee members and members at large. Members of the committee may take responsibility for specific webpages or content.
Education and Training – Board Representative: Julie Pavlin
This committee will help plan and organize workshop activities at the National Syndromic Surveillance Conferences. It will identify useful educational, training and reference materials for the website. It will seek additional venues for sharing knowledge and promoting research, including workshops at other conferences, universities, public health training centers, and distance learning sites. This committee will target much of its work towards public health practitioners and students of public health, with an emphasis on the practical application of disease surveillance methods.
External Partners – Board Representative: Daniel M. Sosin
Outreach to governmental and professional organizations is important to the credibility and effectiveness of the Society to promote the development and implementation of surveillance innovations in public health practice. This committee will work with societies and other institutions with overlapping missions and membership, to share research and other resources, to co-sponsor conferences and other activities, and to avoid conflicts. The committee will seek to include members of a sufficiently broad spectrum of organizations—e.g., federal agencies and lead organizations and associations in public health, informatics, and epidemiology– including an international scope, to cover most focus areas of advanced disease surveillance.
Journal – Board Representative: Martin Kulldorff
The need for a journal to publish new developments in syndromic surveillance and other aspects of advanced disease surveillance has become clear in recent years. This committee will determine the requirements for an electronic journal, working with publishers on budget, logistics and editorial regulations. The committee will develop advertising methods to solicit submissions and will assist with setting up the editorial board, but the Society will not have direct impact on editorial decisions.
Research – Board Representative: Howard Burkom
This committee will maintain resources and lines of communication to promote international research in advanced disease surveillance. Such activities can include an open collection of data sets for research purposes, updated lists of relevant publications, and interest-specific contact lists. The committee may assemble research and development work groups in support of the Society’s mission. The committee will also establish and publish a list of priorities for research in syndromic surveillance. The committee might apply for grant funding to conduct original research and may award grants to students interested in research of high priority to the Society.
Public Health Practice – Board Representative: Julia Gunn
This committee will reach out to the public health community to work with users of advanced disease surveillance systems, both to document the utility of surveillance systems and to identify the continued needs of public health practitioners. The committee’s goal is to ensure that the viewpoint and perspectives of public health practitioners are shared and represented within the Society; and that the Society is not out of touch with the ultimate goal of improving surveillance. In addition, this committee will seek to increase the value added by advanced disease surveillance by working directly with health monitors to ensure that their objectives are consistent with the available data and that they have access to the methods and resources needed to realize and benefit from this added value.
Sponsored Activities – Board Representatives: David Buckeridge and Lori Hutwagner
This committee is responsible for reviewing and approving requests to extramural funding agencies (e.g., NIH, CDC, foundations) on behalf of the Society. Applications must be brought to the committee by a Society member who is a principal investigator or co-applicant on the proposal. The committee will consider applications where: (1) the Society will provide support in principle to the proposed activity but will not administer funds, or (2) the Society will administer the funds. The committee is not responsible for overseeing the proposed work in the event that the application is successful; that responsibility rests with the principal investigator. Applications will be reviewed to ensure that the proposed work is likely to further the aims of the Society. The Board of the Society will appoint members to the committee, which will meet as required.
For an update of Commttee activities as of November 2006, click here.