Enteric interview

Local public health agencies and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment work together to prevent foodborne illness and outbreaks by monitoring and investigating individual reports of foodborne illness (or food poisoning). If you or a loved one recently had a foodborne illness, public health may contact you for a routine telephone or online interview.
The information you provide will help CDPHE understand who is getting ill and could even  help identify what caused the foodborne illness. More importantly, it can help prevent other people from becoming ill. Learn more on CDPHE’s foodborne illness webpage or on the CDC’s foodborne germs and illness webpage.

FAQs

How did you get my information?

Colorado law requires doctors and laboratories to report certain conditions to CDPHE or the local public health area so we can follow up with patients. This information is confidential and stored in a secure manner (just like the information you share with your doctor).

Why should I do the interview?

By providing information on what foods you recently ate, where you ate or bought the food, and other places you visited, you’re helping public health determine how you might have gotten ill. For example, if you let us know that you ate at a certain restaurant before you became ill and we learn that several other people who ate at that same restaurant became ill, we can investigate to see if it was something at the restaurant that caused everyone to get sick and take actions to prevent your loved ones and others in your community from getting sick.

What kinds of questions will you ask?

The interview asks about recent foods, exposures, and activities that may affect your health, including:

• Foods you have recently eaten
• Sources of drinking water and other water exposures
• Animals you may have had contact with, including pets and farm animals
• Recent symptoms
• Recent travel
• People you know who are also ill
• Demographics, including age, sex, gender, race, and ethnicity

You will not be asked for Social Security numbers or bank account, credit card, or any other financial information.  

What will you do with my information?

All responses are confidential and stored in a secure manner (just like the information you share with your doctor). Your information will only be used by public health to help determine what caused the foodborne illness and guide appropriate prevention measures.

How long will it take? 

Interviews generally take between 10-30 minutes. Because foodborne illness can be spread in so many different ways (food, water, animals, travel, person to person), we need to ask a lot of questions. Your assistance is greatly appreciated and critical in preventing others in your community from getting sick.

How do I complete the interview? 

If you recently tested positive for a foodborne illness, you may be contacted for either a telephone or online interview. For the telephone interview, a public health investigator will call you and ask you questions over the phone. For the online interview, you will receive a text message from a public health investigator with a link to a website called REDCap to complete an online survey.

For more information, contact CDPHE at 303-692-2700 or email copublichealth@state.co.us.