What term describes collections of health data like births, deaths, cancer, and chronic diseases?

• A. Registries
• B. Sentinel Surveillance
• C. NWSS
• D. Active Surveillance

Answer: (A)

Registries are organized systems that collect, store, and analyze uniform data about individuals with specific health conditions or health events across a defined population. This includes data on births and deaths, as well as cancer and chronic diseases. Because they standardize what is measured and how it’s reported, registries let public health professionals track incidence, prevalence, progression, outcomes, and trends over time. This information supports planning, research, and program evaluation.

Sentinel surveillance uses data from selected sites to infer trends, rather than capturing every case in a population. Active surveillance involves proactively seeking out every new case, which is more resource-intensive and used in outbreak investigations. NWSS is not the standard term for this kind of broad, population-wide data collection.