USING INFORMATICS TO

PROMOTE COMMUNITY/
POPULATION HEALTH

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Objectives

Provide an overview of community and population

health informatics.
Describe informatics tools for promoting community
and population health.
Define the roles of federal, state and local public
health agencies in the development of public health
informatics.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using The Foundation of Knowledge Model

 The collection and processing of population health

data creates the information that becomes the basis
for knowledge in the field of public health.
There is an ever increasing need for timely
information about the health of communities, states
and countries.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using The Foundation of Knowledge Model

“Public health is a field that encompasses an

amalgam of science, action, research, policy,
advocacy and government”
( Yasnoff, Overhage, Humphreys&, LaVenture, 2001).
Florence Nightingale should also be recognized as an
early public health informaticist.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Florence Nightingale

Her efforts led to a total reorganization of how and

what healthcare statistics should be collected
(Dossey, 2000).
Health information systems address the collection,
storage, analysis, interpretation and communication
of health data and information.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using The Foundation of Knowledge Model

Public health changes the social conditions and

systems that affect everyone within a given
community.
PHI addresses the data, information, and knowledge
that public health professionals generate and use to
meet the core functions of public health
(PHDSC 8, 2006).

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using The Foundation of Knowledge Model
Role of public health :
“fulfilling society’s interest in assuring conditions
in which people can be healthy”(IOM, 1988).
Functions of public health :
 prevention of epidemics and the spread of disease
 protection against environmental hazards
 promotion of health
 disaster response and recovery
 providing access to health care
(PHDSC 1, 2006)
Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011
 Community Health Risk Assessment

"threat and risk assessment."

“Threat" is a harmful act such as the deployment of a

virus or illegal network penetration.

A "risk" is the expectation that a threat may

succeed and the potential damage that can occur”
(PCMAG, 2007).

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Community Health Risk Assessment

“Health risk assessments are used to estimate

whether current of future exposures will pose
health risks to a broad populations”
Used to weigh the benefits and costs of various
program alternatives for reducing exposure to
potential hazards.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Community Health Risk Assessment

based in sound science and professional judgments.

Hazard identification seeks to determine the types of
health problems could be caused by exposure to a
potentially hazardous material.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Community Health Risk Assessment

Exposure assessment is done to determine the

length, amount, and pattern of exposure to the
potentially hazardous material.
Dose-response is an estimation of how much
exposure to the potential hazard would cause varying
degrees of health effects.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Community Health Risk Assessment

Risk Characterization is an assessment of the risk

of the hazardous material causing illness in the
population (CEPA, 1998).
Specific risk assessment tools
Suicide Prevention Community Assessment Tool
(SPRC)
 general community information,
 prevention networks,
 demographics of the target population
 community assets and risk factors.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Community Health Risk Assessment

Other risk assessment tools :

 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)

The Behaviorial Risk Factor Surveillance System
(BRFSS)
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
(NHANES).

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Agency Support of Epidemiology and The
Monitoring of Disease Outbreaks

A comprehensive surveillance effort supports

timely investigation and identifies data needs for
managing the public health response to an
outbreak or terrorist event.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Agency Support of Epidemiology and The
Monitoring Disease Outbreaks

Needs :
Standardized vocabulary
Coding structure.

A standardized vocabulary must address local

language use versus universal language usage for
public health.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Agency Support of Epidemiology and The
Monitoring Disease Outbreaks

Information is vital to public health programming.

The data processed into public health information
can be from administrative, financial and facility
sources.
Data on vital statistics from state and local
governments are also used for public health
purposes.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Applying Knowledge to Health Disaster Planning
and Preparation

The availability of data and speed of data exchange

can have a significant impact on critical PH functions
like disease monitoring and syndromic surveillance.
Special data collections are needed to address
specific public health issues and investigations and
emergencies are addressed and managed with paper.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Applying Knowledge to Health Disaster Planning
and Preparation

“Syndromic surveillance for early outbreak

detection is an investigational approach where
health department staff monitor disease indicators
continually to detect outbreaks of diseases earlier
and more completely than might otherwise be
possible with traditional public health methods”

(Buehler, Hopkins, Overhage, Sosin, & Tong, 2004)

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Informatics Tools to Support Communication and
Dissemination

The revolution in IT has made the capture and

analysis of health data and the distribution of
healthcare information more achievable and less
costly.
Two-way communication :
public health agencies and community
clinicians and clinical laboratories
 Importance : can identify clusters of reportable and
unusual diseases.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Informatics Tools to Support Communication and
Dissemination

PH information systems represent a partnership of

GO ,NGO and local public health professionals.
Dissemination of prevention guidelines and
communication among PH officials, clinicians and
patients has become a major benefit of PHI.
IT solutions can be used to provide accurate and
timely information that will guide public health
actions.

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using Feedback to Improve Responses and
Promote Readiness

1. Improvement of community health status and

population health depends on effective public and
healthcare infrastructures.
2. Population health data must be considered an
important part of the infrastructure of all regional
health information exchanges (RHIOs) which are
the building blocks for a national health
information network (NHIN).

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using Feedback to Improve Responses and
Promote Readiness

3. RHIO/NHIN can also support public health goals

through broader opportunities for participation in
surveillance and prevention activities, improved
case management and care coordination, and
increased accuracy and timeliness of information for
disease reporting.
(LaVenture, 2005).

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011

 Using Feedback to Improve Responses
and Promote Readiness

4. Public health informatics strives to ensure that

health data systems will meet the data needs of all
organizations interested in population health as
national and international standards are
developed for healthcare data collection.

 standardization of environmental
 socio-cultural
 economic
 other data that are relevant to population health
(PHDSC, 2007)
Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011
 Questions to answer

Imagine that you are a public health informatics

specialist and you and your colleagues have
determined that the threat of a new strain of
influenza indicates a need for a mass inoculation
program.
What public health data would have been used to
determine the need for such a program and
What data will be collected to determine the
success of such a program?

Sheila Lyn U. Recidoro,RN May 2011