ASTHO Announces Progress in the Development of The Public Health Community Platform

New platform will provide forum for data exchange, analysis, and visualization to support public health work

March 18, 2015

ARLINGTON, VA—The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) is pleased to announce progress in the development of the Public Health Community Platform (PHCP). PHCP is a CDC-funded, ASTHO-led initiative to develop a space to find solutions for common public health informatics problems that state, local, territorial, tribal health agencies, and their partners experience. This new platform will provide public health with universal access to modernized shared resources that can transform data into action for a healthier nation.

"PHCP will drive public health to be a full player in health interoperability, and support public health's growing role in the learning health system,” says ASTHO Senior Director of Informatics Paula Soper. “In its second year of development, the PHCP Steering Committee has established an interim executive committee (IEC) and workgroups to guide the ongoing creation of the platform to meet the public health community’s needs.” These workgroups include pilot groups for end-to-end case reporting, an immunization hub, and analysis and visualization.

The PHCP Steering Committee recently convened for a meeting on March 11-12 to review recent PHCP activities and plan for next steps of the platform’s development. Fifteen organizations were represented, including public health associations, state and local health departments, electronic health record vendors, provider organizations, and CDC.

Following the meeting, the newly elected IEC convened for the first time; the IEC will guide PHCP’s development in accordance with ASTHO’s contractual obligations and CDC’s priorities. IEC responsibilities will include monitoring the PHCP’s progress on its strategic map, identifying and coordinating project priorities with ASTHO and CDC, overseeing the work of the PHCP committees, considering specific PHCP services to offer, and exploring novel means for funding and sustaining PHCP as an evolving, independent entity.

IEC membership is restricted to current PHCP Steering Committee members or special advisors who are employed by a state or local governmental agency or nonprofit organization. Members of the IEC include:  

John Thomas ‘J.T.’ Lane ASTHO co-chair Assistant Secretary for Public Health for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals Arthur Davidson NACCHO co-chair Director, Public Health Informatics, Epidemiology, and Preparedness at the Denver Public Health Paula Soper Ex Officio member Senior Director and PHCP Project Lead at ASTHO Laura Conn Ex Officio member PHCP CDC Project Officer

Bill Brand Member Director, Public Health Informatics Science at the Public Health Informatics Institute Jim Collins Member Director, Communicable Disease Division at the Michigan Department of Community Health Mark Conde Member Associate Director, EMPH Applied Public Health Informatics Program at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University Rebecca Coyle Member Executive Director of the American Immunization Registry Association Bryant Karras Member Chief Public Health Informatics Officer (Sr. Epidemiologist) and Meaningful Use Coordinator at the Washington State Department of Health

The IEC will serve until July 2015, when it will evaluate its efficacy to determine if it should be reconstituted or continued for one year as an Executive Committee. The PHCP Steering Committee charter expires June 30; following the end of the steering committee charter, the executive committee will function as the decisionmaking body for PHCP.

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ASTHO is the national nonprofit organization representing the public health agencies of the United States, the U.S. territories and freely associated states, and Washington, D.C., as well as the more than 100,000 public health professionals these agencies employ. ASTHO members, the chief health officials of these jurisdictions, are dedicated to formulating and influencing sound public health policy and to ensuring excellence in public health practice.