Routine gathering of data about new cases of a disease is critical to a health department’s ability to recognize patterns of transmission and identify areas where outbreaks are occurring in a timely manner. In San Francisco, the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Applied Research, Community Health, Epidemiology & Surveillance (ARCHES) Branch is responsible for tracking viral hepatitis in San Francisco. In 2019, due to limited resources dedicated to local viral hepatitis surveillance, SFDPH sought support from Facente Consulting in updating their surveillance planning and disseminating available data to the public.
Facente Consulting assisted ARCHES with the facilitation of citywide meetings to discuss surveillance of viral hepatitis, helping them to identify data tools that could aid in the analysis and reporting of hepatitis A, B, and C infections. We also used ArcGIS software to create maps showing viral hepatitis cases by zip code, and provided further support for policy research and analysis of de-identified surveillance data. Together, these analytic pieces helped catalyze the health department’s first comprehensive report on viral hepatitis in 11 years in 2021.