Health and demographic surveillance in a high middle income country: the SEACO research platform, Malaysia

Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) are dynamic or open cohorts based on a regular, longitudinal surveillance of an entire population within a set geographic location. HDSS were historically established in resource poor settings to provide an alternative source of evidence to glean some understanding of disease trends and to undertake community-based, disease specific intervention studies. Based on the HDSS methodology, the South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) was established in Malaysia in 2011. Unlike most HDSS, SEACO is a generic ‘community health laboratory;’ a multi-purpose research platform to enable a broad range of life course epidemiological projects and complex interventions to be undertaken in both health and non-health related disciplines.

In this presentation, we discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the establishment of HDSS in middle to high income countries and the potential for the data generated by such platforms.

Speakers

Daniel Reidpath

Director, South East Asia Community Observatory, Monash University

Professor Daniel D Reidpath is Professor of Population Health and Head of the Public Health Unit at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Monash University campus in Sunway, Malaysia. He is also the Director of the South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) – a health and demographic surveillance site based in Segamat, Johor. In addition to being a social epidemiologist, with expertise in equity and health systems     and implementation research, he has a keen interest in information technologies for population health research with a focus on open source software.

Pascale Allotey

Assoc Director (International): South East Asia Community Observatory, Monash University

Professor Pascale Allotey is Professor of Public Health and Head of Global Public Health at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Monash University campus in Sunway, Malaysia. She is the Associate Director (International) of the South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) – a health and demographic surveillance site based in Segamat, Johor. She is a medical anthropologist and epidemiologist with research interests in the health of marginalized populations, sexual and reproductive health and rights, health policy, health systems and implementation research and public health research capacity building.