Implementing HIV/AIDS and syphilis reporting into an existing electronic communicable disease surveillance system: Training successes, challenges, and lessons learned

The North Carolina Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NC EDSS) is a centralized web-based surveillance system with the purpose of improving timeliness, reliability, and accuracy of communicable disease reporting and investigations in North Carolina. Through a partnership between the NC Division of Public Health (NC DPH) and the UNC Center for Public Health Preparedness, NC EDSS has been introduced in phases to NC local health departments (LHDs) (n=85) through face-to-face trainings for tuberculosis (2006-2008) and general communicable diseases/STDs (2008). In 2012, NC EDSS was implemented in the Communicable Disease Branch's Regional Field Offices (n=7) for the reporting of HIV/AIDS and syphilis. A three-day face-to-face training was designed for regional field office staff (including Disease Intervention Specialists) responsible for case investigations, partner notifications, and reporting of HIV/AIDS and syphilis cases to NC DPH. LHDs were also trained on a limited basis through webinars. This presentation describes the challenges related to local and regional health departments transitioning to a web-based electronic reporting system for HIV/AIDS and syphilis, and the collaboration between an academic partner and NC DPH to carry out a curriculum design and training plan. It identifies elements in the training plan and curriculum design that were successful and elements where improvements can be made. It will discuss the challenges and resources needed to train staff from all Regional Field Offices in a 6 week period and LHDs through webinars. In addition, this presentation will include results from classroom training evaluations and a post-training evaluation.