NAHDO is in Year Two of a three-year Cooperative Agreement with CDC to “Establish Health Data Partnerships in Environmental Public Health Tracking”. The goals of this project during Year One were to promote the use of hospital inpatient and emergency department data in Tracking applications and facilitate CDC Tracking program goals. Year Two goals are to develop tools and guidelines for health care data sharing for Tracking applications and improve the availability of health care data for Tracking Network functions. During Year Three goals will be to continue expanding the number of hospital inpatient and emergency department data sets available to the Tracking Network and emphasize the integration of health care and environmental data sets and measures.
During the first year, NAHDO, in consultation with the CDC and Tracking states, used various methods to accomplish project objectives:
- Conducted an assessment of current barriers inhibiting access to these data
- Established a multi-state data sharing demonstration project.
- Established a working collaboration between NAHDO and its membership network and the CDC Tracking Network.
During Year 1, NAHDO worked with six Tracking states in a demonstration pilot project to assess the facilitators and inhibitors to acquiring and releasing hospitalization data. According to one Tracking Program, “NAHDO’s involvement was critical in working with data stewards. In some states, NAHDO’s strength was getting doors opened and the dialogue established”. NAHDO will continue to rely on workgroup participants from the states of Maryland, Utah, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Maine to provide input about the challenges and solutions around the acquisition of hospitalization data in these states, and invite other Tracking states to participate. The pilot and key informant interviews of the Tracking partners in the six states will inform the activities during Year Two. NAHDO helped open the doors to the health data agency in some cases and helped elevate the importance and legitimacy of the data request in others.1 Continuing the outreach during Year 2 will help states address priority data issues identified by Tracking states.