The importance of long-term records in publichealth surveillance: the US weekly sanitaryreports, 1888–1912, revisited

• Published in: Journal of public health (Oxford, England) England), 1997-03, Vol.19 (1), p.76-84
• Main Authors: Cliff, Andrew D., Haggett, Peter, Smallman-Raynor, Matthew, Stroup, Donna F., Williamson, G.David
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: history; infectious diseases; public health surveillance; United States
• ISSN: 1741-3842; 1741-3850
• DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.pubmed.a024593

Background This paper outlines the ways in which a little-used archive of early public health records may throw lighton longer-term trends in international epidemic behaviourand serve as a major source of epidemiological informationfor historians of urbanization and public health. The WeeklyAbstract of Sanitary Reports was the official disease surveil-lance report of the US Public Health Service and itspredecessors, and began to publish urban mortality statisticson a regular basis in 1888. Here, the authors describe the first25 years of continuous reporting (1888–1912), when theReports contained not only disease data for US cities, butalso records sent back by US consuls based in some 250cities in many parts of the world. Methods The content of the weekly editions of the Reportswas systematically sampled and analysed using graphicaltechniques and the simple statistical method of runningmeans. Results Relatively complete weekly series of mortality fromall causes, and six infectious diseases (diphtheria, enteric ortyphoid fever, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis andwhooping cough) were identified for a total of 100 citiesworld–wide. Conclusion Reporting coverage for these cities is sufficientlycomplete that multivariate analysis should be possible toobtain a comparative picture of mortality for many parts ofthe world. Despite limitations of the data, sources of the typedescribed in this paper form an important comparativedatabase for studying international patterns of mortality.