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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

John Graham, W, North Carolina Institute for Public Health, UNC-CH, School of Public Health, 400 Roberson St, Carrboro, NC 27510, 919-966-8450, jwgraham@email.unc.edu

The Northeastern North Carolina Partnership for Public Health (NENCPPH) is one of six “incubator collaboratives” in North Carolina. Like the others, the NENCPPH is a voluntary partnership of mostly rural, under-resourced local health departments, which by working together, undertake projects that enable them to pool resources, exchange ideas, and enjoy economies of scale. One such project is a regional GIS collaboration. This collaboration intends to establish a regional GIS capacity such that each of the local health departments acquires a GIS capacity to undertake its own mapping studies and presentations and that the Partnership can undertake common regional studies.

To this end, the Partnership has asked that the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, a department and the service and outreach arm of the UNC-CH School of Public Health, coordinate the design and execution of this project. The project includes the development of a central server and related support services (e.g. backup services), selection and installation of client software, including GIS tools and tabular data manipulation tools. Finally the technology architecture includes data collection tools (e.g. handhelds, tablet PCs) to automate much of the data collection effort. Key this project is the participation of staff from each of the member health departments. Some will be key GIS support personnel including “train-the-trainer” roles. Others will be specialists in data survey and collection methods, and others will be responsible for data maintenance and conversion. who are participating in substantial training. This is a large, complex project with many handoffs, a large number of participants, and a significant number of tasks being conducted simultaneously.

Lessons-learned relate to: 1) the individual and collective role of the participant local health directors who've provided resources, staff, and direction consistently throughout the project, 2) savings through collaboration, 3) project management organization and execution, 4) complications associated with collaborations, and 5) sustainability.

Learning Objectives:

• - Reviewing lessons learned from a 19 county collaboration by small, under-resourced counties to implement a common GIS solution
• - Review of the scalable, distributed technology architecture that provides common access to GIS capabilities
• -Review of public health-based data standards and data content common to all partner local health departments
• -Review of training requirements and economies of scale related to collaboration

Keywords: Information Technology, Collaboration

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No