Syndromic Surveillance of Emergency Departments (EDs):
Substance Use and Menatl Health-related ED Visists
in Greater New Orleans
The Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) participates in the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE). Participating Louisiana emergency departments (EDs) enter data daily directly into the ESSENCE system. All EDs in Greater New Orleans participate in the ESSENCE system and, statewide, 90 percent participate. LDH staff in the Infectious Disease Epidemiology section then use the system to identify and monitor emerging health conditions and diseases threatening Louisianans to support targetted public health interventions. LDH staff apply standard definitions of syndromic conditions developed by the CDC and other users based on text describing the presenting problem as well as discharge diagnoses. Syndromic definitions have been developed for identifying substance use and mental health-related ED visits. ESSENCE data is available from early 2019.
Louisiana Early Event Detection System (LEEDS), 2014--2018
After the cyber attack in the Fall 2019, which was followed by the Covid-19 epidemic, the Louisiana Department of Health began transitioning from the Louisiana Early Event Detection System (LEEDS) to the federal ESSENCE system. Because of differences in the syndromic definitions used, previous analyses of LEEDS data cannot be directly compared to analyses of ESSENCE data. However, LDH was able to load some historical syndromic data into the ESSENCE system. As a result, data is available from early in 2019.
