Timeliness of Nongovernmental versus Governmental Global Outbreak Communications

Luke Mondor, John S. Brownstein, Emily Chan, Lawrence C. Madoff, Marjorie P. Pollack, David L. Buckeridge, and Timothy F. Brewer

Author affiliations: McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (L. Mondor, D.L. Buckeridge, T.F. Brewer); Harvard–Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (J.S. Brownstein, E. Chan); Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston (J.S. Brownstein, E. Chan); International Society for Infectious Diseases, Brookline, Massachusetts, USA (L.C. Madoff, M.P. Pollack, T.F. Brewer); University of Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA (L. Madoff); and Harvard Medical School, Boston (J.S. Brownstein)

Abstract

To compare the timeliness of nongovernmental and governmental communications of infectious disease outbreaks and evaluate trends for each over time, we investigated the time elapsed from the beginning of an outbreak to public reporting of the event. We found that governmental sources improved the timeliness of public reporting of infectious disease outbreaks during the study period.

Rapid public communication of incipient disease threats, even with incomplete information, might enable quicker response measures, including enhanced disease surveillance and initiation of protective measures, for those at risk (1). Traditionally, public notifications are communicated through a hierarchical infrastructure from which local, provincial or state, and national health authorities obtain information by interacting with health care providers and diagnostic laboratories (2). However, many health authorities now rely on informal outbreak-reporting systems, such as ProMED-mail, for timely signals of infectious threats (3,4), as encouraged by the revised WHO International Health Regulations (5). Research has suggested that globally, informal sources provide outbreak warnings faster than traditional governmental reporting mechanisms (6). However, existing research of this assertion has been limited to disease-specific evaluations (7) or descriptive summaries (8). We compared the timeliness of initial outbreak communications cited by nongovernmental sources to those of governmental sources and examined temporal trends in the time from outbreak onset to public communication for outbreaks communicated by each source, independently.