Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health
The Public Health Surveillance Strategy 2025-2030 is designed to strengthen our public health surveillance system to better support increased life expectancy with quality of life for New Zealanders.
The strategy was a collaboration between the Public Health Agency with the wider Ministry, Health New Zealand, and ESR. Extensive consultation with the wider surveillance sector informed its development.
Public health surveillance is the collection and dissemination of health or health-related information to plan and implement initiatives to help keep people healthy, and protect them from new health threats, such as disease outbreaks.
Sources of information for public health surveillance can be drawn from across the health system, government, and wider society. They include laboratory test results, mortality data, wastewater testing, global health data, mosquito surveillance, health surveys, clinician reporting, and even retail spending.
The health system has an obligation to protect and improve the health of New Zealanders. This cannot be achieved without the well-coordinated and systematic collection of public health information. The strategy outlines an approach to public health surveillance based on ensuring the confidentiality, privacy and protection of people’s personal health data. It supports using information only to support protecting and improving the health of New Zealanders.
The strategy identifies four strategic directions. These include:
- strengthening governance, leadership, and coordination
- focussing on the things that matter
- responding to emerging challenges and opportunities
- continuously improving.