CDC awards $4M+ for public health informatics
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced $4.37 million in competitive grants to enhance healthcare information management and to improve the detection of and response to emerging public health threats.
The grants will fund four new Centers of Excellence in Public Health Informatics, at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Wellesley, Mass., Indiana University in Indianapolis, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
The CDC said the purpose of the center of excellence initiative is to discover strategies and tools that increase the capability of health departments, physicians and other healthcare providers to promote health and prevent diseases, injuries or disabilities. A common emphasis will be translation of results into measurable public health impacts.
“These centers will advance the study and practice of public health informatics through collaborative efforts among academic public health experts, local and state public health departments, developing regional health information organizations and other health and informatics professionals,” said Stephen B. Thacker, MD, acting director of CDC’s National Center for Public Health Informatics.
Each center will conduct two new projects that support national priorities in informatics, and support biosurveillance for potential health threats through immediate access to data from hospitals and healthcare systems in major metropolitan areas across the nation.
The Centers, principal investigators, projects and overall goals are:
The grants will fund four new Centers of Excellence in Public Health Informatics, at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Wellesley, Mass., Indiana University in Indianapolis, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
The CDC said the purpose of the center of excellence initiative is to discover strategies and tools that increase the capability of health departments, physicians and other healthcare providers to promote health and prevent diseases, injuries or disabilities. A common emphasis will be translation of results into measurable public health impacts.
“These centers will advance the study and practice of public health informatics through collaborative efforts among academic public health experts, local and state public health departments, developing regional health information organizations and other health and informatics professionals,” said Stephen B. Thacker, MD, acting director of CDC’s National Center for Public Health Informatics.
Each center will conduct two new projects that support national priorities in informatics, and support biosurveillance for potential health threats through immediate access to data from hospitals and healthcare systems in major metropolitan areas across the nation.
The Centers, principal investigators, projects and overall goals are:
- Harvard Pilgrim Health Care: Richard Platt, MD, and Kenneth D. Mandl, MD. 1) Personally Controlled Health Records and Social Networks; and 2) Electronic Support for Public Health: Diabetes Mellitus. These have the goal of furthering the integration of EHRs and personal health records (PHRs) with public health functions and outcomes. This builds upon existing CDC public health informatics center of excellence to support health practice to prevent chronic diseases and their effects.
- Indiana University: Shaun J. Grannis, MD. 1) Bringing Public Health to the Point of Care: Overcoming Digital Barriers; and 2) Enhancing Basic Infrastructure Capabilities that Support Public Health Practice. These will create an Indiana center in public health informatics to develop and maintain research, education and practice. The goals are integrating health information exchange (HIE) methodology across private and public health domains and standardization.
- University of Pittsburgh: Matthew Wagner, MD. 1) Automatic Case Detection Using Clinical Data; and 2) Bayesian Outbreak Detection and Characterization. The goal is to create a center for advanced study of informatics in public health at the university. The center will bring together a group of investigators to improve the U.S. capability to detect cases of disease and outbreaks of disease.
- University of Utah: Matthew Samore, MD. 1) Visual Analytics and Decision Support for Core Public Health Missions; and 2) Just-In-Time Delivery of Dynamically Maintained Public Health Knowledge. These build on work done at the Rocky Mountain Center for Translational Research in Public Health Informatics under a previous center of excellence in public health informatics grant. The goals are to address decision support needs for health professionals for disease control.