South-East Asia Regional Conference on Epidemiology

162 | <strong>South</strong>-<strong>East</strong> <strong>Asia</strong> <strong>Regional</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on Epidemiology
1. Knowledge generation - credible design, accurate data, sound analysis, comprehensive
synthesis.
2. Knowledge exchange - relevant content, appropriate translation, timely dissemination,
modulated release.
3. Knowledge uptake - accessible information, readable message, motivated user, rewarding
outcome.
In this context, health policy-makers in several transition economies are faced with the burden of
tackling the triple burden of disease in the complex scenario of competing health priorities, financial
constraints, inconclusive evidence, contextualization of interventions and political commitments.
Research done using epidemiological tools generates analytical information on the magnitude,
distribution, determinants, correlations, trends, projections of diseases and their risk factors and
provides solution options for considering interventions. Public health surveillance is an ongoing
process of systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health data essential for planning,
implementing and evaluating public health activities, closely integrated with timely dissemination of
data, to enable effective and efficient action to be taken to prevent and control disease. It ranges from
compulsorily notifiable diseases, specific disease registries (population-based and/or hospital-based),
continuous or repeated surveys of representative samples of population to aggregate data for recording
trends on consumption patterns and economic activity.
It would be ideal to do surveillance on noncommunicable diseases but this requires a lot of resources
(human, financial, institutional) for its sustainability. It is now well established that a cluster of major
risk factors (tobacco, alcohol, inappropriate diet, physical inactivity, obesity, hypertension, diabetes
and dyslipidemias) govern the occurrence of major NCDs much before they are firmly established
as diseases (4). Collecting data on them and monitoring their trends is a good beginning towards
disease surveillance since they are easily measurable and are amenable to interventions. Effective
interventions would reduce the disease burden and promote health.
Fig. 2: Multi-level determinants of NCD risk factors