Applied Network Science for Relational Chronic Disease Surveillance.

Chronic diseases and conditions are the leading cause of death and disability in the United States. The number of people living with two or more chronic conditions has increased in the last decades and is expected to continue to rise over the upcoming years. Yet, traditional chronic disease surveillance practices have been specialized for a specific symptom or a single health condition. To better understand the complication and complexity of multimorbidity in chronic diseases, this paper suggests the use of network science for multimorbidity network surveillance (MNS). We discuss why the relational perspective in surveillance is critical and how network science can help and be integrated into surveillance and public health practice.