Survey Tools for Foodborne Inspection Follow-Up

Fri, 12/06/2013 - 15:18 -- klouther

As part of our Foodborne Illness (FBIs) Survey, we are looking at putting it on our website via Survey Monkey. Has anyone used survey monkey FBI follow-up or to get responses from the public on your website?

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mschigoda's picture
Submitted by mschigoda on

While I never used Survey Monkey for FBI follow-up specifically, I have used it in the past and found it very intuitive and user-friendly.

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Melissa Schigoda, MS
Public Health Improvement Program Coordinator
National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI)

Submitted by sjarvis on

We use Survey Monkey here at KCHD pretty often. Never for FBI or anything the public has access to though.

We have used Google Drive: the form function for our In Person Counselors and collecting contact information. It has been fairly useful so far. The best part is, the form data can be exported into an excel document for further analyzation

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Samuel Jarvis, M.S. LEHP, CERC
Emergency Preparedness Planner
Johnson County Public Health
855 S. Dubuque Street
Iowa City, Iowa
319-356-6040

jerober's picture
Submitted by jerober on

We've used SurveyMonkey for a few foodborne outbreak investigations, with varying success, but not for the public to report suspect FBI. The public can report FBIs via phone to our Food Protection Bureau or via a secure online system developed by our state health department.

If you want to conduct surveys using SurveyMonkey, are collecting PHI and need to comply with HIPAA, you may need a platinum or enterprise account.

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Jenny Robertson, MSPH
Epidemiologist
Salt Lake County Health Department
slcohealth.org

Submitted by Dan Eder on

We use SurveyMonkey frequently at our organization for a variety of tasks, but never related to an FBI or FBI follow up. Our contact regarding an FBI complaint is normally received via email through our website, from a medical provider, or a phone call from the complainant directly to us. We often follow up with them with our epidemiologist by telephone to fill out the FBI Investigation form, but when a complaint is received with only an email adddress we try to get the information electronically. When you get a complaint is the concept to have a person fill out a FBI Investigation Form via SurveyMonkey when they are trying to file a complaint? If that is the route you are trying to go the positives is that you may get better answers to your questions because a person can do it at their own time rather than trying to remember everything on a phone call (sometimes during the day when the person is at work). The negative aspect to that concept is that oftentimes when you interview someone with a suspected foodborne you often ask questions not always in the form based on your interview, which ends up triggering new information not previously known (which sometimes leads to an unknown party or event, food item brought to the event, linkaged maybe not food related, etc). If you decide to go this route I would be curious to hear about your findings.

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Dan Eder

Submitted by klouther on

As part of the QI process, we have gone through several versions of the survey and finally decided on the right one for us (at this time). Basically, it asks general info (name, phone, etc along with food eaten outside the home in the last 3 days and symptoms). We thought about having a full 72 hour food history log (like in our paper version) but we often don't get good info since the caller is usually calling to complain about X restaurant that made them sick. This way, we can look at what food they ate outside the home, compare it to symptoms, and determine if an extra visit to the restaurant is needed/necessary or which next steps need to be made (including a phone call to the person filling out the survey). We just sent out a pilot link to our sanitarians, PHNs and some family members (who are non-PH and non-health care workers) to get their feedback on the feasiblity, ease of the survey, questions, etc. Still have some work to do, but making headway.

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Submitted by jherzog on

I have used survey monkey multiple times and find it quite helpful. I've distributed the survey link through email and we have also posted on our website. It is a very useful tool.

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jherzog

Submitted by mbuchelli on

I mostly use it for training evaluations (pre & post test) for our Capacity Building Trainings for HIV Care and Prevention. I have also used it for Needs Assessments for developing training plans. Just recently, I used to get feedback on social media/messaging. I was able to create a "workgroup" to address how to improve HIV Messaging in CT, based on the people who responded to the survey.

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Marianne Buchelli

Marianne Shawley's picture
Submitted by Marianne Shawley on

We have a link to our Client Satisfaction Survey on our website, which is powered by Survey Monkey. We also use Survey Monkey to judge the New Employee Orientation process, as part of our QI project to improve new employee orientation.

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Marianne K. Shawley
QI/Accreditation Coordinator
Henry County Health Department
mshawley@henrycohd.org

Submitted by ebakota on

We use SurveyMonkey for several QI related initiatives. But we don't use it for FBI. I take all FBI calls and would love to have our complainants use an online form at some point in the future. I would be curious to see if the total # of complaints went up or down if a LHD transitioned to only online forms.

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Submitted by ElizabethMizelle on

We've used Survey Gizmo extensively (different software, but it's similar) and had very good results. We haven't used it for FBI, but to collect data from families, health care providers, docs, etc. We've also used it to share a lot of information quickly, such as training materials, etc. that we aren't able to get up on our web page soon enough.
I've had the best results by using a form AND offering contact information for telephone support. I think it's still important to take calls because of the digital divide--not everyone has access or is comfortable using an internet form to submit info.
However we get a lot more forms filled out online than calls, especially when we optimize the page for use on a mobile device.

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Submitted by Jne310 on

One state used Twitter during an outbreak investigation. I think we need to be open to new technology and this sounds like it could work given the right parameters set in the beginning, such as a name and contact information field, specific timeframes, etc. Does you no good if someone just reports on there that restaurant xyz is nasty and I got sick from there and you have no name, symptoms, timeframe, or way to follow-up with that person. That being said, you would need to have someone monitoring it a lot and it could be really burdensome for your CD staff trying to track down all of that. There is a huge misconception about "food poisoning" and last meal bias, etc. Norovirus is often the case and could or could not be related to food-although we have a lot of FBI that go undetected for sure. #formerepi #isn'tphfun

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C. Janie Cambron, RS, BS, MPH
Program Manager, EnviroHealthLink, Kentucky's Environmental PH Tracking Network
Kentucky Department for Public Health
Phone: 502-564-4537 ext. 4088; janie.cambron@ky.gov