Preface

The year 2000 marks several changes in this report. First, because this report has always concentrated on communicable diseases, we have changed the name from the Indiana Report of Disease of Public Health Interest to the Indiana Report of Infectious Diseases to better reflect the content.

Second, in previous years we included case totals of reported disease for all Indiana counties.  However, increasing concerns about maintaining the confidentiality of the case reports that we receive required changing our methods of reporting.  Beginning with this report, we will include disease case totals for only those counties reporting 5 or more cases, unless we aggregate the case totals over a span of more than 5 years.  We will show counties reporting 0 to 4 disease cases as having fewer than 5 cases reported.  This rule is already used by other organizations, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Third, several items that we had previously included as appendices have been incorporated into the body of the report (e.g. drug-resistant pneumococcal disease, influenza sentinel surveillance) or will be published separately in the Indiana Epidemiology Newsletter (e.g. annual outbreak summary, etc.).  We encourage you to review the monthly Indiana Epidemiology Newsletter to gain more timely information about public health in Indiana.  You can obtain a subscription to this newsletter (distributed via electronic mail) by contacting the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) Epidemiology Resource Center (ERC), or you can view it on-line at the ISDH web site,  www.in.gov/isdh/.

Fourth, beginning with this report, we have changed both the layout and the means of distribution of this report.  We are listing disease in alphabetical order instead of by category.  Also, we are publishing the report in electronic form for the first time.  We have implemented several other changes that have reduced the number of pages and improved the documents legibility.

We hope that these changes will make the report more accessible and relevant and, at the same time, protect the privacy of Indiana's citizens.  Please send any comments, concerns or suggestions for improving the format or content of this report to:

Hans Messersmith
Director, Surveillance/Investigation Unit
ISDH Epidemiology Resource Center
Indiana State Department of Health
2 N. Meridian Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
(317) 233-7861
epiresource@isdh.in.gov

Editor, Indiana Report of Infectious Diseases

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