Public Health has a long and storied history of increasing capacity and resilience in communities.
Many public health organizations have made significant investments in the implementation of electronic information systems: now is time to use the data effectively. Let’s make a positive impact.
Public health has a broad mandate and limited resources. Timely, focused data capture, analysis and use allows organizations to rapidly identify public health issues and define responses. It also drives detection of urgent health risks or broader systemic challenges that compel stakeholders to engage in program development and define sustainable intervention strategies.
Public Health Intelligence is a common term these days. It is the use of data collected as part of services provided and used to make programs better. More specifically, it can be applied in addition to your public health information systems to:
-
Improve situational awareness of disease incidence and prevalence to identify short-term interventions, such as immunization clinics for at- risk populations, and inform strategic priorities
-
Provide timely information dissemination - the right data to the right people at the right time – in an easily consumable format that supports and helps guide action
-
Build a common understanding of issues in a community to align the resources and responses to create meaningful and measurable health outcomes and care delivery improvements
-
Integrate multiple information sources (e.g. population, geographic, and inventory financial data) to support timely and rich research and analysis to drive more efficient and effective prevention and outbreak management efforts
Marty Pearce, Public Health Practice Leader
mpearce@gevityinc.com
1 - World Health Organization: Public Health http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story076/en/