Infectious Disease Epidemiology & Prevention

Purpose

To prevent infections through the surveillance of infectious diseases and vaccinations, providing health professional advice, risk assessment, and communication on infections and infection hygiene, as well as participating in the national research-based infectious disease preparedness, including outbreak investigation.

Tasks

• National epidemiological surveillance of infections, monitoring of vaccination uptake (including determinants of vaccination), and the effectiveness and safety of vaccination programs. Wastewater from selected treatment plants is monitored for SARS-CoV-2 and other infections. Research-based advisory support is provided to doctors and other healthcare professionals in the country regarding infectious disease prevention, infection hygiene, and vaccinations.Epidemiological assistance during disease outbreaks, for example, identifying the source of infection in foodborne outbreaks using analytical epidemiological methods.
• Development and maintenance of National Infection Control Guidelines.
• Information on infection prevention for international travelers through the institute’s website.
• Dissemination of knowledge on the occurrence of infectious diseases, outbreaks, prevention, and infection hygiene via SSI’s website, newsletters like EPI-NEWS, INFLUENZA-NEWS, CEI-NEWS, and other media.
• Reminders sent to parents for vaccinations within the childhood vaccination program, reminders to hepatitis B-infected pregnant women about vaccinating their children, and reminders if vaccination timing has been missed.
• Monitoring mortality in the population in relation to epidemics and other public health threats (e.g., heatwaves) in Denmark and across numerous European countries through the EuroMOMO program.
• Participation in the human-veterinary preparedness against infections, such as zoonotic influenza.
• Education, including the training of future specialists in public health, master’s, and Ph.D. students.
• Research, documentation, teaching, and development within infectious disease epidemiology.

International tasks: The department serves as the national contact point for the European EWRS alert system and the global IHR alert system under WHO. It participates in pan-European disease surveillance and control through the ECDC, collaborates with WHO, and participates in several European projects and programs (EU-WISH, JAMRAI-2, VITAL, DURABLE, as well as multiple collaborations on using electronic health records to calculate COVID vaccine effectiveness, monitor severe respiratory infections (SARI), sexually transmitted diseases, and antibiotic resistance in bacteremia). The department also hosts ECDC’s 2-year training program in intervention epidemiology (EPIET). 

Head of department

Palle Valentiner-Branth