The Contingency Plan for Brazil Public Health Emergency uses environmental surveillance, health surveillance and epidemiological surveillance as technical areas of intervention for public health emergencies.
The CDC defines epidemiological surveillance as the systematic and continuous collection, the analysis and interpretation of data on the health, essential for planning, implementation and evaluation of public health service, coupled with the timely distribution of such data to those who need them.
It is useful to differentiate these three concepts as actions of intervention in front of a public health emergency (chemical agents, biological agents, radiological agents…). What settings can be useful to differentiate an action of intervention of environmental surveillance, health surveillance and epidemiological surveillance?
If you want a concrete setting to illustrate these concepts, although not really an acute emergency, one could use asbestos.
environmental surveillance : assessment of asbestos exposure in factories, mines, and homes
health surveillace; low dose CT for early detection of lung cancer and mesothelioma, quit smoking campaigns to reduce lung cancer risk.
epidemiological surveillance; mesothelioma disease incidence registers
As I have come to realize analyzing different publications, in general terms it has been drawn a distinction between the three concepts, which is widely used among experts, where environmental surveillance refers to the monitoring of chemical, physical and biological hazards present in the environment, epidemiological surveillance refers to monitoring diseases and risk factors in populations, and public health surveillance refers to monitoring living conditions and conditions of care services (whether preventive or curative). However, there are important discussions since both the concept of health and the environment have been in constant debate. I usually use the concept of public health surveillance broadly, so that it environmental monitoring, epidemiological surveillance, monitoring of health systems, technologies and medical personnel are included. However, this way of understanding the issue is not common in the literature although in some health surveillance systems these components are included.
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