Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #108377

Jerry Parks, Albemarle Regional Health Services, P.O. Box 189, Elizabeth City, NC 27907, 252-338-4400, jlp@pocono.ppcc.dst.nc.us and John Graham, PhD, NC Institute for Public Health, UNC at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health, CB# 8165, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8165.

The Northeast North Carolina Partnership for Public Health (NENCPPH) is a well-established “voluntary partnership” consisting of nineteen member counties, many of which are among the smallest and poorest counties in North Carolina. The purpose of this partnership has been to identify and act on opportunities for collaboration to enhance the provision of essential services by the member health agencies.

A Partnership initiative takes advantage of current and anticipated information technologies. Existing business applications and population-based information practices vary considerably from agency to agency. As a first step, we identified best practices to replicate them across member agencies. In addition, there is considerable replication of IT investments across agencies. We have identified opportunities to make single investments (e.g. a single GIS or web and email server) that can be shared by all or several of the member agencies. Finally, the Partnership agencies would like to more easily collect, distribute, and share information among themselves and with the NC Division of Public Health. Specifically the Partnership would like to share management, environmental health, preparedness, and general public health assessment information. With these objectives in mind, NENCPPH has developed an information technology plan to identify best practices, redundant activities and investments, and information requirements among its constituent members. This inventory has been analyzed, and related collaborative recommendations have been developed.

Learning Objectives:

• - Discuss organizational preconditions necessary to develop an interagency information technology plan
• - Describe the IT planning process including the inventory of existing management and population surveillance systems and databases, support resources, and agency business processes and objectives, analysis, and development of recommendations
• - Discuss IT planning recommendations with potential barriers to implementation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation