Foodborne Illness Outbreak Environmental Antecedents 2017-2019

1,430 environmental antecedents, or root causes, were reported from 393 foodborne illness outbreaks across 24 U.S. jurisdictions between 2017 and 2019. The dataset, compiled by the CDC, details how factors like employee oversight and training contributed to outbreaks. It provides a basis for analyzing the environmental conditions leading to food contamination.

Use Cases

• Analyze the frequency of specific antecedents like 'lack of oversight of employees' or 'lack of training' across the 393 reported outbreaks.
• Investigate correlations between outbreak characteristics and the most reported antecedents, such as 'lack of a food safety culture'.
• Model the distribution of the 1,430 antecedents to identify common patterns in environmental root causes for public health intervention.

Strengths

• Reports 1,430 specific environmental antecedents, providing a substantial basis for root cause analysis.
• Covers 393 distinct outbreaks over a 3-year period (2017-2019) from 24 jurisdictions, offering multi-year, multi-region perspective.
• Originates from the CDC's National Environmental Assessments Reporting System, ensuring public health authority.

Limitations

• The dataset's scope is limited to 24 reporting jurisdictions, which may not represent all U.S. regions or international contexts.
• Specific data fields, column structure, and file formats are not described, complicating immediate analytical use.
• Data is static for 2017-2019 and may not reflect more recent trends or antecedents.

Provenance

Source

United States Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Collection Method

Data reported to the National Environmental Assessments Reporting System (NEARS) by state and local health departments following outbreak investigations.

Time Range

2017 – 2019

Freshness

Last metadata update was 2026-02-23, but the underlying data covers 2017-2019.

Geography

24 reporting jurisdictions within the United States