The use of standard case definitions allows public health practitioners to measure and assess the distribution and determinants of disease and injury in diverse populations and settings over time. To facilitate comparisons of case counts performed in different populations by different public health agencies, these surveillance case definitions are being documented in order to harmonize health surveillance and epidemiologic analyses throughout the Department of Defense.

• Standard surveillance case definitions used by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC) for routine surveillance and reporting.
• Designed for use with administrative healthcare data contained in the Defense Medical
  Surveillance System (DMSS).
• Primarily uses ICD-9-CM codes to identify conditions of interest diagnosed in the military healthcare system.

Goals of this document are to promote internal consistency and credibility of AFHSC surveillance efforts over time, and to promote consistency and comparability of public
health information and data across multiple agencies.

• Standard clinical case definitions used by the DoD to guide military public health officers, health-care providers, and laboratories in identifying and reporting specific diseases and injuries.
• Includes conditions reported to civilian authorities and military-specific diseases and injuries.
• The AFHSC maintains and publishes these guidelines with input from the three services and the DoD Joint Preventive Medicine Policy Group.

Goals of this document are to achieve data consistency and standardization of reportable events tracking across the Services.