Routine Restaurant Inspections: An Underutilized Data Source for Foodborne Illness Prevention

• Restaurants are frequent settings for foodborne illness transmission. • Restaurant inspection data are not commonly linked to illness surveillance data. • Most studies focused on comparing outbreak restaurants to non-outbreak restaurants. • Studies demonstrate that compliance translates to reductions in foodborne illness. • Linking inspection data to illness data can inform prevention methods. Foodborne illness remains an important public health challenge and restaurants are frequent settings for foodborne illness transmission. Restaurant inspections are a core public health function aimed at reducing the risk of foodborne illness transmission. While public health surveillance data and restaurant inspection data are both routinely collected and share a common goal of driving prevention, these data are rarely linked to understand the direct risk of food safety violations on the occurrence of foodborne illness. We describe the evidence linking routine restaurant inspections to the occurrence of foodborne illness, challenges in linking data, and highlight the potential benefits of linking restaurant inspection data as a novel framework for reducing the occurrence of foodborne illness.