Page 34 - Driving Public Health in the Fast Lane

Key Findings

Progress Made, but Silos Remain

In-depth conversations with public health subject matter experts, combined with extensive research
of current literature, identified several key findings in the current state of the nation’s public health
surveillance system.

Improvements: Paving the Way

Public and private sector collaboration and leadership have improved current systems and implemented
limited disease or condition specific electronic data exchange.

1. CDC Surveillance Strategy

Over the years, as technology has advanced, there have been investments to build the nation’s
public health data superhighway. CDC continuously works strategically to improve the exchange
of data within its own programs and within the states. Launched in 2014 after recognition that the
nation’s public health data systems were inefficient and falling behind, a strategy was developed and
implemented to improve public health surveillance. The elements of the strategy focused on four
areas: NNDSS, syndromic surveillance, mortality reporting, and ELR to establish data standards,
decrease redundancies and reporting burdens on state and local health departments, and reduce
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the number of siloed, disease-specific systems. Between 2014 and 2018, significant progress and
achievements have been made:

• Mortality reports electronically collected from states within ten days of death increased from 7
percent in 2014 to 63 percent in 2018;

• A modernized electronic messaging system was implemented to receive notifiable disease cases;
• 60 percent of emergency department visits are reported electronically to health departments;

• 80 percent of laboratory reports are now sent electronically to state health departments. 21

CDC has also sought to use innovation to enhance the collection of data, and are working to
establish a secure, cloud-based platform to centralize where health departments and public health
laboratories can send data. Ultimately, the Surveillance Data Platform will reduce the burden of
duplicative data entry, sending the same data multiple times to different disease program areas,
increase coordination between the states and CDC, and provide new opportunities to perform
advanced data analytics including predictive analyses.

20 Office of Public Health Scientific Services. CDC Public Health Surveillance Strategy Report: 2014-2018. cdc.gov. https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/pdfs/Surveillance-Series-Bookleth.pdf. Published
September 2018.
21 Ibid.

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