USING NURSE HOT LINE CALLS FOR DISEASE SURVEILLANCE

Nurse hot line calls are a potential source of public health surveilla nce data and may help identify epidemics of emerging infectious diseas es. In this study, nurse hot line data from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, show ed more than a 17-fold increase in calls for diarrhea during the 1993 Milwaukee cryptosporidiosis outbreak. Moreover, consistent patterns of seasonal variation in diarrhea-and vomiting-related calls were detect ed from the Baltimore, Maryland, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, hot line s. Analysis of nurse hot line calls may provide an inexpensive and tim ely method for improving disease surveillance.