June 2023

CDC offices to partner for flexible case data exchange

As part of CDC’s Public Health Data Strategy, CDC’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology (OPHDST) and Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) are collaborating to offer jurisdictions more flexibility in how they send their case data to CDC through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS).

In the modern vision of CDC’s Front Door, CDC will offer jurisdictions a single point of entry to submit NNDSS case data to CDC through the Enterprise Data Exchange (DEX) platform, regardless of the format in which data are sent. Once CDC receives case data through DEX, the Message Validation, Processing, and Provisioning System (MVPS) will validate, process, analyze, and provide these data to CDC programs.

CDC also plans to leverage EpiSync, a new approach being developed for public health jurisdictions to transmit information as tables to CDC, as part of DEX. This means jurisdictions would have the option of sending their case data to CDC in a CSV format, in addition to the current HL7^® format.

CDC is offering CSV as an alternative format to HL7 to meet the needs of all jurisdictions. However, CDC recognizes that many jurisdictions have invested significant effort into developing HL7 expertise and onboarding HL7-based Message Mapping Guides (MMGs). CDC will continue to receive HL7 data from jurisdictions who prefer to use this format. 

CDC will continue to provide regular updates on various efforts currently underway, including MVPS modernization, NBS modernization, EpiSync, electronic case reporting, related pilots, and more. CDC will provide updates through our regular communication channels, such as Case Surveillance News, the eSHARE webinar series, and CDC’s Frequently Asked Questions: Case Surveillance Modernization webpage.

CDC held an eSHARE training webinar, titled “CDC’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology: Updates on Case Surveillance Modernization” on June 20, 2023. This webinar offered jurisdictions the opportunity to learn more about CDC’s plans to make case data exchange more flexible.

Access the slides and recording in the eSHARE archive. CDC posts these materials soon after each webinar.

If you have questions or input for CDC, please use the NNDSS jurisdiction feedback form.

CDC publishes 2020 annual NNDSS infectious disease data

CDC has posted annual infectious disease data tables for 2020 on CDC WONDER. These tables provide detailed information about cases of infectious disease sent by state, local, and territorial jurisdictions to CDC using the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS).

Users can access the NNDSS annual data tables on CDC WONDER from the data and statistics section of the NNDSS website. In addition, CDC offers these data in an interactive view of NNDSS annual data.

Table 1 displays reported infectious notifiable disease case counts and rates for the United States overall.

Tables 2a–2t display reported infectious notifiable disease case counts for specific U.S. states and territories.

CDC has added a new “Reporting Area” category to Tables 2a–2t. Beginning with the 2020 annual tables, reported cases among non-U.S. residents are displayed in a separate row in Table 2.

Cases are assigned to a “Reporting Area” based on the country of usual residence (COUR) algorithm.

• If the case’s country of usual residence is the United States, a U.S. territory, unknown, or country is not reported, the case is assigned to the reporting jurisdiction submitting the case to NNDSS.
• Cases that do not meet the criteria above are assigned to the Non-U.S. Residents’ category.

Some jurisdictions do not report the COUR data element or do not report it for all conditions. This is because the COUR data element is only available in the HL7 generic version 2 (GenV2) and disease-specific message mapping guides. Jurisdictions are not able to send this information in legacy case notification formats.

Table 2 stratifies data into four categories based upon the COUR algorithm:

• S. residents, excluding U.S. territories;
• S. territories;
• Non-U.S. residents; and
• Total.

Table 3 displays reported infectious notifiable disease cases by month for the United States overall.

Tables 4–7 display reported infectious notifiable disease case counts and rates by age group, sex, race, and ethnicity for the United States overall.

Table 8 displays the total resident population and population by age subgroups by reporting area. Reporting areas include the United States overall and Health and Human Services region, state, and territory. This information provides a reference for population denominators used in rate calculations.

The list of national notifiable diseases and case definitions for 2020 is available on the NNDSS website.

CDC’s NNDSS team would like to thank jurisdictions and CDC disease programs for supporting NNDSS during reconciliation and publication of the 2020 annual tables.

CDC develops quarterly roadmap for NBS modernization

CDC is redesigning the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System Base System (NBS) to meet current and future public health needs and strengthen state, local, territorial, and tribal (STLT) surveillance infrastructure. As part of NBS’s modernization effort, the team has developed a quarterly roadmap to communicate future progress, milestones, and major outcomes.

Read the NBS modernization roadmap.

The roadmap will serve as a guide to help developers and target audiences understand:

• How modernization strengthens an interconnected data system
• The iterative and agile change process for new features and updates
• NBS’s approach to building a state-of-the-art integrated disease surveillance system.

To better align with CDC’s new direction for NBS, the NBS team recently transitioned from a 6/12/24-month approach to a more flexible quarterly planning schedule to ensure the best outcomes for the project.

The new planning schedule allows CDC to engage with jurisdictions and users more frequently to integrate jurisdiction feedback into the new product development lifecycle. The feedback from jurisdictions and lessons learned in the previous quarter may impact revisions made to the roadmap during the next quarter.

Visit and bookmark CDC’s NBS modernization webpage to learn more about CDC’s vision and approach for NBS modernization and get monthly project updates.

CDC held an eSHARE webinar, titled “CDC’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology: Updates on Case Surveillance Modernization” on June 20, 2023. Access the slides and recording in the eSHARE archive. CDC posts these materials soon after each webinar.

CDC will hold the next eSHARE webinar, titled “Highlights from the 2023 Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Annual Conference,” on July 18, 2023, 3:00–4:00 PM ET.

To join an eSHARE webinar, please see your calendar invitation or contact edx@cdc.gov for login information with the subject line “eSHARE invitation.”