Discussion: Health Informatics and Public Health Leadership
Discussion: Health Informatics and Public Health Leadership Consider the example of the bubonic plague in the Introduction. How might shared information on the geographic representation of the disease have changed the course of diagnosis and even treatment? Perhaps physicians of that time would have been able to discover that cities with large rodent populations also had a high incidence of the plague, which might have helped them to pinpoint the source of the disease sooner. Or perhaps they would have been able to better trace the direction of the plague from one regional area to another, or the demographics of the individuals who tended to get it. Today, public health organizations are fortunate to have at their disposal a wealth of information systems that serve as essential public health tools. These systems are used to guide public health decisions on everything from epidemiologic disease and risk factor surveillance to facility billing and records to policy development. The need for information is not so much the issue as the usability of the data. Thus, well-designed information systems are key to managing the data and organizing it into relevant information. Public health organizations heavily rely on such systems to inform managerial decision making and improve operations, planning, policy analysis, health outcomes assessment, epidemiologic surveillance, and program evaluation and performance measurement.
One type of health data analysis tool is a geographic information system (GIS). The CDC (n.d.-c) defines GIS as “a collection of science and technology tools used to manage geographic relationships and integrate information. GIS helps us analyze spatially-referenced data and make well-informed decisions based on the association between the data and the geography.”
A system is only as good as the leadership applied to it, however. How might public health administrators best use their leadership skills to manage data and informatics in a strategic way that benefits the organization and its stakeholders and constituents?
For this week’s Discussion, review the Learning Resources. Reflect on the media, especially the piece titled Public Health Informatics regarding how individuals in the Howard County Health Department employed the use of GIS and other health informatics in their daily work.
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