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Public Health Information Technology: Additional Strategic Planning Needed to Guide HHS’s Efforts to Establish Electronic Situational Awareness Capabilities

GAO-11-99 December 17, 2010
A catastrophic public health event could threaten our national security and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties. Recognizing the need for efficient sharing of real-time information to help prevent devastating consequences of public health emergencies, Congress included in the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act in December 2006 a mandate for the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in collaboration with state, local, and tribal public health officials, to develop and deliver to Congress a strategic plan for the establishment and evaluation of an electronic nationwide public health situational awareness capability. Pursuant to requirements of the act, GAO reviewed HHS’s plans for and status of efforts to implement these capabilities, described collaborative efforts to establish a network, and determined grants authorized by the act and awarded to public health entities. GAO assessed relevant strategic planning documents and interviewed HHS officials and public health stakeholders.

HHS did not develop and deliver to congressional committees a strategic plan that demonstrated the steps to be taken toward the establishment and evaluation of an electronic public health situational awareness network, as required by PAHPA. While multiple offices within HHS have developed related strategies that could contribute to a comprehensive strategic plan for an electronic public health information network to enhance situational awareness, these strategies were not developed for this purpose. Instead, the offices developed the strategies to address their specific goals, objectives, and priorities and to meet requirements of executive and statutory authorities that mandated the development of strategies for nationwide health information exchange, coordinated biosurveillance, and health security. However, HHS has not defined a comprehensive strategic plan that identifies goals, objectives, activities, and priorities and that integrates related strategies to achieve the unified electronic nationwide situational awareness capability required by PAHPA. The department has developed and implemented information technology systems intended to enable electronic information sharing to support early detection of and response to public health emergencies; however, these systems were not developed as part of a comprehensive, coordinated strategic plan as required by PAHPA. Instead, they were developed to support ongoing public health activities over the past decade, such as disease and syndromic surveillance. Without the guidance and direction that would be provided by an overall strategic plan that defines requirements for establishing and evaluating the capabilities of existing and planned information systems, HHS cannot be assured that its resources are being effectively used to develop and implement systems that are able to collect, analyze, and share the information needed to fulfill requirements for an electronic nationwide public health situational awareness capability.

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Long comment and recommended historical warnings and prescriptions below the line.

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Be the Change: Save a Life
ABC News kicks off year-long global health care series Friday, Dec. 17 at 10pm eastern/9pm central.

“20/20 ABC starts a weekly show about the Design Revolution.”
Tonight: Stanford’s Extreme Affordability Program showcased: http://abcn.ws/f16Dq9

Thanks to those posting to the Out of Poverty Twitter feed

Also see:

+ How the “Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability” class launched several internationally known start-ups

+ Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests

quickstart link

http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/quick/start
The purpose of this site is to provide a central location to find resource status information for disaster zones and to help regions prepare for disaster.

• Disaster Response
• Disaster Preparedness
• On-going Human Services

We aim to enter command & control information for regions IN ADVANCE of a disaster, AND immediately following, so as to help relief groups hit the ground running, and to help survivors immediately locate services and supplies in the event of a disaster in their region. This command & control information might be as simple as entering the name and cell phone for groups that are prepared to be first responders in a region. Or if a region’s disaster community chooses, it can mean entering a list of disaster response units and/or facilities that are on “standby” for disaster response activity. There are many disaster response “command and control” systems in use by VOADs and EMA organizations. We hope to compliment what these established systems offer and we hope to offer unaffiliated groups a method for tracking their own needs and resources.

For a look into the vaccine conflict, see Frontline’s “The Vaccine War“. For counter-vaccine viewpoints,  Vaccineinitiative.org hosts white papers, articles, opinion pieces, scholarly reports from scientists, physicians, activists, who are offering constructive challenges to the belief of the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Gary Null Speaking Out at the NYS Assembly Hearing | 10-13-2009 | (part 1 of 3)

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MassChallenge has awarded OsmoPure, an NCIIA E-Team, one of its four $100,000 prizes. See announcement.

OsmoPure, from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, is developing a low-cost water purification device for developing countries based on simple membrane filtration technology. The team showcased the invention at NCIIA’s student innovation showcase in San Francisco earlier this year.

Source link

Haiti Epidemic Advisory System

http://haiti.mphise.net

http://www.haitiresiliencesystem.org

http://haiti.youdop.org

Open Letter to Mr. Clinton

http://twitter.com/Biosurveillance

link

Access the entire collection anytime for $50.00. Or purchase seminars individually for $19.95.

Thanks to Cryptome.org

Chris Elam

Program Director, Meatless Monday

Posted: October 25, 2010 10:13 AM

Short Film Reveals The Secret Life of Beef

Livestock today consume 5 times as much grain as the entire American population, the average meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to fork, and seven football fields’ worth of land is bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals and the crops that feed them.

But it doesn’t have to be all doom-and-gloom. We as consumers still have options, which, over time, can change our economy. It’s this idea that drives INFORM — the educational and advocacy nonprofit that raises environmental consciousness for the general public through visual media. Its “Secret Life” film series, seen by over 2 million viewers in 80 countries, examines the lifecycle environmental impact of everyday objects we all consume.

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Go directly to YouTube short)

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Bio-Economics

Worth a Look: Book Reviews of Capitalism Reincarnated

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Civilization-Building

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Collective Intelligence

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Common Wealth

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Conscious, Evolutionary, Integral Activism & Goodness

"True Cost"

Jon Lebkowsky Home

Science, lies, evidence, knowledge

Full Story Online

Marc

• About Marc
• Posts by Marc

Your iPhone and iPad Make Me Sick!

Your iPhone or iPad can get me sick around this time of year. That’s because it’s flu season, and every time you sneeze into your hands and wipe it all over your touch screen device, you could be passing on a virus when you decide to share it with someone else. So unless you’re immunized for the season and you keep a small bottle of Purell with you at all times, I’ll be checking out your gaming high scores from afar, thank you very much. I don’t need your Angry Birds to give me swine or bird flu.

Phi Beta Iota: The full story is a very professional concise account with integrated quotes from solid sources.  We have read elsewhere that the hotel telephone is the single greatest disease vector when traveling.  Tip of the Hat to Marc.