Advocacy Project: Healthy People/THOMAS

Healthy People 2010 Goal #23 - Public Health Infrastructure

Goal: Ensure that Federal, Tribal, State, and local agencies are provided with an infrastructure that allows them to provide essential public health services effectively.

There are four focus points that the Department of Health & Human Services hope to address in order to achieve progress towards the goal; data and information systems, workforce, public health organizations, prevention research. I am going to focus on data and information systems.

• Goal objective 23-3: Increase the proportion of major national health data systems that use geocoding to promote nationwide use of geographic information systems
• Target: 100 percent
• Baseline: 50 percent of major national health data systems geocoded records to street address or latitude and longitude in 2000
• Sources: CDC, NCHS
  

Progress: As of now the Progress Quotient Chart for area 23: Use of geocoding in major health data systems, has shown a 0% increase towards its 2010 goal. The use of geocoding has remained constant, 50% of major health systems using geocoding in 2000 and 2004.

• What is Geocoding? - Many current health systems rely on address to base there business decisions off of. Geocoding is a form of location filing by using longitude and latitude. Geocoding can target exact world locations and match that with how it relates to health disparities in race/ethnicity. The process of determining these coordinates and linking this intelligence to a street address is known as geocoding. (What is Geocoding? Business Geographics)

Disparities: Public Health Infrastructure objective 23-3 is not population based, therefore, a disparity study was not conducted. PHI objectives work to eliminate disparities in access to care and health outcomes for vulnerable populations by addressing the capacity and resources of the public health infrastructure and educational training for persons working within it.

Opportunities and Challenges: IT (Information Technology) systems, the core element in public health infrastructure is the focus for opportunities directed to benefit the targeted geocoding objective. There has been three major efforts directed towards development and coordinate public health data.

1. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) - ONC helps by providing leadership for the development and nationwide installment of IT infrastructure. Including exchange of information between different operating systems. This type of infrastructure is designed to improve quality and efficiency of health care and capability for consumers to access their care and safety.
   
2. Public Health Information Network (PHIN) - PHIN is managed by the CDC to improve the electronic communication within the public health community.
   
3. National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network - The goal for this network is to collect, integrate, analyze, and interpret data from monitoring environmental hazards, humans exposure to those hazards, and human health effects correlated to environmental hazards in order to protect communities from adverse health effects.

Emerging Issues: The most urgent issue that Public Health Infrastructure's have to deal with is the unexpected outbreak of an infectious disease or natural disasters. These unexpected events bring stress upon the pubic health system that focus on responding to these situations. The newest issues that require attention are bioterrorism and emergency preparedness. After all in any situation its hard to prepare for the unexpected. Success in the Public Health Infrastructure rest on the ability to change and overcome these new threats.

H.R. 1039 Promoting Health Information Technology Act 2009 (Introduced to House)

Title: To encourage and enhance the adoption of interoperable health information technology to improve health care quality, reduce medical errors, and increase the efficiency of care.

Sponsor: Rep Johnson, Sam [TX-3] (introduced 2/12/2009)

Cosponsors: 26 Cosponsors (Click Here for list)

Latest Major Action: 2/12/2009 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.

My Political Representatives: U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar

I am a student majoring in Health Care Administration and an issue involving the way major health systems will use information technology will more than likely affect me in the rest of my career. Being that health care consumes a large chunk of U.S. spending it seems only right that we take action to make sure health systems top priority is communication within and outside the health infrastructure. I believe that you should vote YES to the Promoting Health Information Technology Act 2009.