The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first office exclusively dedicated to creating public health data strategies said her team is developing a strategic roadmap to promote interoperability and health equity over the next two years.

Jennifer Layden, acting director for the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, said the agency was taking the lessons it learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and embarking on a new mission that involved modernizing and improving nationwide access to public health data…

The goal is part of an enterprise-wide effort at the CDC to improve outcomes and promote health equity at the local, state and federal levels. Research has shown that enhanced data interoperability can help improve public health equity and patient outcomes.

A data and surveillance workgroup at the CDC published a series of recommendations late last year around improving the public health data exchange that included defining the minimal data necessary for core public health services, establishing public health data systems standards and certification and establishing frameworks and agreements for the use of public health data… Read the full article here.