Strategic Surveillance for Food Safety Designing a Surveillance Approach and Considerations for Implementation
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Strategic Surveillance for Food Safety Designing a surveillance approach and considerations for implementation Jon Freeman, Nathan Ryan, Julian Glenesk For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR2519 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., and Cambridge, UK © Copyright 2019 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. RAND Europe is a not-for-profit research organisation that helps to improve policy and decision making through research and analysis. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org www.randeurope.org Preface This document reports on RAND Europe’s study into the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) strategic surveillance programme. The FSA commissioned the study in February 2018. The aim of the project is to design a high-level end-to-end approach for strategic surveillance, identify relevant analytic tools and methods, and develop an implementation plan for the programme. The report’s intended audience is the FSA, the programme’s senior responsible officer (SRO), those involved in the current practice of food surveillance and the nascent strategic surveillance team (SST). RAND Europe is a not-for-profit independent policy research organisation that aims to improve policy and decision making in the public interest through objective research and analysis. RAND Europe’s clients include national governments, multilateral institutions and other organisations with a need for rigorous, independent and interdisciplinary analysis. Part of the global RAND Corporation, RAND Europe has offices in Cambridge, UK, and Brussels, Belgium. For more information please contact: Jon Freeman Research Group Director, Innovation, Health and Science RAND Europe Westbrook Centre, Milton Road Cambridge CB4 1YG United Kingdom Tel. +44 (1223) 352 611 [email protected] iii Table of contents Preface .................................................................................................................................................... iii Summary of the design and implementation considerations ................................................................... vii Figures and tables .................................................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations ......................................................................................................................................... xii 1. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) needs an approach to strategic surveillance ............................. 1 1.1. The project has four main objectives and aims to develop a surveillance approach for the UK food system ....................................................................................................................................... 2 1.2. There are caveats and limitations on the scope and implementation of the study ........................ 2 1.3. The report is structured around actions to support implementation ........................................... 3 2. Designing an approach to strategic surveillance ............................................................................ 5 2.1. RAND undertook a requirements elicitation exercise with FSA senior stakeholders .................... 5 2.2. An approach to strategic surveillance is comprised of system-wide principles and steps ............... 6 2.3. There are various principles relating to the whole strategic surveillance system, those informed by users, the system and tools, methods and data sources ....................................................................... 7 2.4. The approach builds on existing FSA surveillance models .......................................................... 7 2.5. The strategic surveillance system involves a number of discrete processes .................................... 9 2.6. The proposed approach was tested on previous use cases conducted for the FSA ...................... 10 2.7. The validation workshop generated a long-list of steps the FSA should implement ................... 12 3. An effective approach to selecting and prioritising topics ............................................................ 17 3.1. Selecting and prioritising topics should be undertaken using a data-driven, repeatable and informed decision making process ................................................................................................... 17 3.2. The FSA should undertake foresight and horizon scanning activities to identify unknown unknowns ....................................................................................................................................... 18 4. Improving communication and coordination ............................................................................. 19 4.1. The surveillance programme should continue to identify and engage stakeholders.................... 19 4.2. There is a need to define the process for acting on and communicating assessments ................. 20 4.3. The surveillance programme should increase its visibility with stakeholders to assist data collection and future action ............................................................................................................. 21 5. Gathering quality data, information and knowledge ................................................................... 23 v 5.1. The approach should continue leveraging existing data and link together data sources to exploit insights ........................................................................................................................................... 23 5.2. The FSA should compile a data catalogue based on metadata ................................................... 24 5.3. Skills, knowledge and experience should be captured (i.e. in the form of a skills and methods catalogue) to assist the FSA to structure problem solving and implement the approach ................... 24 6. Concluding reflections and implementation considerations for the FSA ..................................... 27 References .............................................................................................................................................. 29 Annex A. Detailed view of the approach .......................................................................................... 31 A.1. Plan and direct ........................................................................................................................ 39 A.2. Collect and collate ................................................................................................................... 39 A.3. Analyse and produce ................................................................................................................ 40 A.4. Report and disseminate............................................................................................................ 40 A.5. Evaluate and review ................................................................................................................. 41 Annex B. Identification of skills capture, analytic tools and methods other than software packages 43 B.1. Skills identification, tools and methods aid structured thinking and problem solving ............... 43 B.2. A RACI matrix can be used to clarify roles and responsibilities ................................................ 43 B.3. Using a Stirling matrix can help illustrate the type of problem and analytical approaches that can be used to address it ........................................................................................................................ 43 B.4. Horizon scanning and foresight exercises aim to identify future challenges ............................... 44 B.5. Delphi builds consensus amongst subject matter experts and decision makers .......................... 45 B.6. STREAM is a project prioritisation approach that can be used to rationally select projects against a set of stakeholder requirements ..................................................................................................... 45 B.7. Hackathons can be used to bring together expertise and data across a range of disciplines to tackle problems ............................................................................................................................... 46 B.8. Crowdsourcing allows for the involvement of non-traditional stakeholders .............................. 46 vi Strategic Surveillance Summary of the design and implementation considerations RAND Europe was engaged to assist with the design and implementation planning of an approach to strategic surveillance The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has engaged RAND Europe to assist with the design and implementation of a strategic surveillance system for the UK food system. This is in support