Recommendations for Public Health Surveillance of Syphilis in the United States

This report provides updated syphilis surveillance guidelines for health department personnel to use in improving and developing syphilis surveillance techniques. Although reporting syphilis cases is mandated by state laws and regulations in the United States, and information about syphilis cases is reported to CDC from all states and territories, the usefulness of surveillance data has been limited by the lack of uniform public health surveillance practices. The intention of this report is to make the collection and reporting of syphilis surveillance data more uniform so that data from a variety sources are comparable.