Tarrant County Public Health – 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Syndromic Surveillance (NEW)

On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse passed over Texas, including most of Tarrant County. In anticipation for the expected increase in visitors to the area, the Tarrant County Public Health department created an internal dashboard to monitor any potential public health impacts of the eclipse using syndromic surveillance data obtained from the North Texas Syndromic Surveillance System (NTXSS). Visualizations were created for: overall emergency room visit volume, direct impacts of the eclipse (eye injury, viewing events, traffic injuries, and mentions of eclipse), and potential indirect impacts such as alcohol, overdoses, mental health, suicidal ideation, firearm injury, sexual violence, and heat-related illness. The dashboard was created using R to pull data via API from ESSENCE and render the report as an HTML document using Quarto. The dashboard was shared with department leadership, emergency management, epidemiologists, and was updated twice daily during the week of the eclipse.

Use of the dashboard revealed minimal or no significant impacts of the eclipse in emergency visits. Overall visit volume did not increase, and while there was a slight increase in visits mentioning the eclipse, there was not an increase in proportion of visits for the syndromes monitored beyond normally expected. Use of syndromic surveillance data helped increase situational awareness around this special event.