Disaster Data Collection

Revised and approved by the ACEP Board of Directors August 2007
Approved by the ACEP Board of Directors October 2000 

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) believes key stakeholders should develop real-time syndromic surveillance capturing a majority of clinical illnesses and injury patterns on a mass scale, regardless of source or occurrence. ACEP supports early identification which can reduce the scale of the incident and lead to a reduction of morbidity and mortality, as well as overall cost and anguish.

ACEP further supports prospective and retrospective disaster data collection and research which is critical for future disaster preparedness. Accurate data collection in a disaster can be difficult without government mandate and assistance. Although the public health system gathers mass epidemiologic data, public health departments play little role in disaster data collection.

Therefore, ACEP supports the following:

• EMS and public health systems and agencies should be incorporated into disaster planning and response.
• All injuries and illnesses related to officially declared disasters and terrorist events should be reported to public health agencies in real-time.
• All disaster-related injuries and illnesses should be incorporated into a disaster collection database to enhance local disaster response.
• All EMS agencies and health care facilities should participate in a public health syndromic surveillance network to identify an infectious disease outbreak, regardless of source, as well as any other public health concern on a mass scale.