Resources for Outbreak Investigation

These templates, developed for use in common types of outbreak investigations, are provided for you to use or modify as you see fit. Although slanted towards outbreaks of gastroenteritis, they can be adapted for other kinds of illness. If you have questions about how they can be used, or ideas for how to improve them, contact Dr. Bill Keene. (see below)

• System overview (Word) [overview.doc]
• Basic outbreak questionnaire (Word) [basicq.doc]
• Shotgun questionnaire (Word) [shotgun.doc]
• Data entry template (a FileMaker Pro document — same for both shotgun and basic questionnaires) [Data Entry.fp7]
• Analysis program for basic outbreaks (text file) [basica.txt]
• Analysis program for shotgun questionnaire (text file) [shotguna.txt]
• Shotgun output laundry (FM — use this to reformat EpiInfo6 output files) [Laundry.fp7]
• Model to estimate cumulative binomial probabilities  [binomial.xls]
• PhoneFinder,a database application that allows one to simultaneously screen 3 web sites (WhitePages.com, Questdex.com, and Google) for potential phone number matches to imported names (e.g., credit card lists from restaurants). It gives a much better hit rate and is a bit faster than traditional hunt-and-peck methods. The PhoneFinder is available in 3 forms:
  1. Runtime version for PCs. This version has been "compiled" to run as a stand-alone program on WindowsXP and Vista based computers. This is a large (14 mb) zipped file; you must unzip it to a destination folder. Ignore all the dozens of dll and other files; the one to click to launch the file is the 5.66 mb file called "PhoneFinder". Confusingly, there is a second file with the same name, but it is smaller!)
  2. Runtime version for Macs. This is a stand-alone version for Macs running OS X 10.4 or later. Also very large, but only has 3 files in the unzipped version.
  3. Native FileMaker file. This is the one to use if you have the FileMaker database application already. It is cross-platform, and very small (~400 kb).

1. You need Microsoft Word® to EDIT (Word) files.
2. You need Microsoft Excel® to EDIT files
3. You need the Adobe Reader to OPEN (pdf) files.
4. You need Adobe Acrobat to EDIT (pdf) files.
5. You need FileMaker Pro version 7 or later to open .fp7 files. You can download a free 30-day trial version of FM7 at http://www.filemaker.com.
6. To download files:
   1. Right-click the file link.
   2. Save the file to your computer.

Contact Details
William E. Keene, PhD, MPH
Oregon Public Health Services
Acute and Communicable Disease Program
800 NE Oregon St #772
Portland, OR 97232
971/673-1100 (Fax)
971/673-1111 (Work)
william.e.keene@state.or.us