US EPA

The Approaches to Estimating the Waterborne Disease Outbreak Burden in the United States: Uses and Limitations of the Waterborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (External Review Draft) document presents approaches for estimating the epidemiologic and economic burden of disease associated with 665 WBDOs reported in the U.S. between 1971 and 2000. The term disease burden broadly refers to the magnitude of the impact incurred by society as a consequence of disease in the community (e.g. decrements in a population's health or the associated economic effects) and there are various metrics that can be employed by analysts to quantify burden. The external review draft report also includes recommendations for the collection and reporting of additional outbreak information that would improve the usefulness of the WBDO database for future disease burden estimates.

Information about U.S. Waterborne Disease Outbreaks (WBDOs) is voluntarily reported by state, territorial and local public health agencies to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC and EPA jointly maintain the WBDO database that summarizes the information collected through this WBDO Surveillance System. The WBDO database describes outbreak attributes including, among other things, the drinking water system deficiency, the etiologic agent, and the number of individuals who became ill. Underreporting of WBDOs is assumed but the magnitude of underreporting is unknown.

Information about U.S. Waterborne Disease Outbreaks (WBDOs) is voluntarily reported by state, territorial and local public health agencies to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC and EPA jointly maintain the WBDO database that summarizes the information collected through this WBDO Surveillance System. The WBDO database describes outbreak attributes including, among other things, the drinking water system deficiency, the etiologic agent, and the number of individuals who became ill. Underreporting of WBDOs is assumed but the magnitude of underreporting is unknown.

Following the external peer review and public comment period, EPA will incorporate the comments in a Final report to be release in 2007 on the NCEA website.

U. S. EPA. Approaches To Estimating the Waterborne Disease Outbreak Burden In the U.S.: Uses and Limitations of the Waterborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (External Review Draft). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/R-06/066, 2006.

Information collected on WBDOs is published biennially in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. For example:

• Oct 22, 2004 surveillance summary for 2001/2002 (PDF, 48pp)
• Nov 22, 2002 surveillance summary for 1999/2000 (PDF, 52pp)
• May 26, 2000 surveillance summary for 1997/1998 (PDF, 44pp)

Additional surveillance summaries can be found at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/sursumpv.html