Page 11 - Driving Public Health in the Fast Lane

• Limited resources, data science, and informatics expertise are available to support public health
systems.

Developing the public health data superhighway requires confronting the new landscape of health data
collection, storage, and sharing. As the public health community, stakeholders, and policymakers seek to
transform the nation’s public health surveillance system, key principles must be considered.

Five Key Principles to Transforming the Nation’s Public Health Surveillance System

1. Enterprise approach to data systems modernization
with new federal funding to enable CDC and state, territorial, local, and tribal health
departments to develop a core data exchange infrastructure. Funding must be sustained to
maintain and upgrade the public health data superhighway;

2. Interoperable data systems
within public health, and between public health and health care to seamlessly exchange
data on the public health data superhighway;

3. Security to protect patient data
by adopting policies, transparent privacy practices, and security measures to defend and
prevent cyberattacks;

4. Workforce that is prepared for the Information Age
to build, implement, maintain, and use the data systems that comprise the public health
data superhighway;

5. Partnership & Innovation with the public and private sectors
to build and maintain the public health data superhighway and establish leading-edge
public health data systems and processes.

High-quality and timely data give us a blueprint to address public health threats, pinpoint action to
protect the health of the nation, and are essential to solve the health problems our nation faces. We can no
longer afford to let public health threats outpace the limits of our public health surveillance system. The
technology is available to develop the public health data superhighway, but new approaches and sustained
investments are needed to get public health out of the slow lane and to improve the health of the nation.

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