Page 47 - Driving Public Health in the Fast Lane

Conclusion

The Future of Public Health is Now

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The use of data is transforming the world. In April 2019 at the 16 Annual World Health Care Congress,
the United States Department of Health and Human Services Chief Data Officer, Mona Siddiqui, stated
that the lack of timely data is the biggest barrier to creating health policy. In her remarks, Siddiqui stated:
“We have a lot of data from 18 months to two years ago. Imagine trying to make policy decisions based
26
on data that is two years old.” Public health threats rapidly evolve, and do not wait for public health
to receive, store, and process data before causing more illness and death. It is frustrating when public
health professionals cannot provide their community timely and relevant information about their health,
or implement policies that help protect them. The nation’s public health data systems are becoming
impediments, not catalysts, to public health action.

Today, public health is on the precipice of a tremendous opportunity to implement cutting edge data
systems to strengthen and safeguard the health of the nation. The public health data superhighway
requires adequate and sustained funding to CDC and state, territorial, local, and tribal public health
departments to build, upgrade, and maintain electronic data systems. Proper resources will expand and
update vital records systems, support electronic laboratory ordering and reporting, expand the number
of hospitals conducting syndromic surveillance, automate disease reports directly from electronic health
records, develop highly skilled data science and informaticians, and improve data security. Without
this investment, public health will continue to fall behin, while advancements in technology render
opportunities to improve public health inaccessible.

Technology’s potential can

only be realized if public health

professionals are equipped to

harness it.

High quality, reliable data has always been the cornerstone of public health surveillance. Today, the tools
and mechanisms to build the public health data superhighway are at our fingertips. Modernization will
require new ways of thinking and moving away from traditional program-based approaches and manual
methods. The nation must build and maintain the public health data superhighway to protect Americans
from the public health threats of tomorrow. The future of public health is now.

26 HHS Chief Data Officer: Lack Of Timely Data Is A Barrier To Policy. Inside Health Policy. https://insidehealthpolicy.com/vitals/hhs-chief-data-officer-lack-timely-data-barrier-policy. Published April
30, 2019.

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