Emergency Department Visits for Respiratory Illnesses by Demographic Group

NSSP data tracks weekly emergency department visit percentages for COVID-19, influenza, and RSV, broken down by demographic categories. The dataset is published by the CDC's National Syndromic Surveillance Program and is updated weekly. It provides surveillance metrics for public health monitoring of respiratory disease burden across different population groups.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in `percent_visits` for `pathogen` over `week_end` to monitor seasonal outbreaks.
• Compare `demographics_values` (e.g., age groups, race) for `demographics_type` to assess disparities in respiratory illness burden.
• Model the correlation between different `pathogen` (COVID-19, Flu, RSV) visit percentages across `geography`.
• Forecast future `percent_visits` for the `Combined` pathogen category using historical `week_end` data.

Strengths

• Weekly update frequency supports near-real-time surveillance.
• Data includes multiple `pathogen` categories (COVID-19, Flu, RSV, Combined) for comparative analysis.
• Breakdown by `demographics_type` and `demographics_values` enables equity-focused research.

Limitations

• Sample size and row count are unknown, limiting assessment of statistical power.
• Specific geographic coverage within the `geography` field is undefined, potentially limiting generalizability.

Provenance

Source

CDC National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) via data.cdc.gov.

Collection Method

Aggregated from emergency department syndromic surveillance data.

Freshness

Updated weekly on Fridays.