Australia’s active hospital-based surveillance for severe childhood disease
Dr Julie Bettinger, Associate Professor at the Vaccine Evaluation Centre in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of British Columbia presented at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) seminar on 23 April 2018. The topic was Active surveillance for immunisation programs: it's the future.
Dr Bettinger is an infectious disease epidemiologist and a Research Scholar for the Michael Smith Foundation for Health whose research interests include vaccine safety and vaccine preventable diseases (specifically meningococcal and pneumococcal invasive infections), as well as attitudes and beliefs around immunization uptake and use. She is the data centre director for the Canadian Immunization Monitoring Program, Active (IMPACT), an active surveillance network for vaccine preventable diseases and vaccine adverse events in 12 tertiary care paediatric hospitals across Canada. She is also the lead investigator for CIRN’s Canadian National Vaccine Safety (CANVAS) network, which monitors the safety of influenza vaccines each year.
Dr Bettinger provided insights from the Canadian Immunization Monitoring Program Active (IMPACT) and Canadian National Vaccine Safety Network (CANVAS) and how these systems complement existing passive surveillance platforms.
