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ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts

A Health Department’s Collaborative Model for Disease
Surveillance Capacity Building
Ikechi Konkwo*1, 2, Robert G. Harmon1, William C. Livingood2, 1, Thomas BryantIII1 and
Saad Zaheer1

1Institute for Public Health Informatics and Research, Duval County Health Dept, Jacksonville, FL, USA; 2Center for Health Equity and
Research - University of Florida/Shands Medical Center, Jacksonville, FL, USA

Objective
Highlight one academic health department’s unique approach to

optimizing collaborative opportunities for capacity development and
document the implications for chronic disease surveillance and pop-
ulation health.

Introduction
Public Health departments are increasingly called upon to be in-

novative in quality service delivery under a dwindling resource cli-
mate as highlighted in several publications of the Institute of
Medicine. Collaboration with other entities in the delivery of core
public health services has emerged as a recurring theme. One model
of this collaboration is an academic health department: a formal af-
filiation between a health professions school and a local health de-
partment. Initially targeted at workforce development, this model of
collaboration has since yielded dividends in other core public health
service areas including community assessment, program evaluation,
community-based participatory research and data analysis.

The Duval County Health Department (DCHD), Florida, presents
a unique community-centered model of the academic health depart-
ment. Prominence in local informatics infrastructure capacity build-
ing and hosting a CDC-CSTE applied public health informatics
fellowship (APHIF) in the Institute for Public Health Informatics and
Research (IPHIR) in partnership with the Center for Health Equity
Research, University of Florida & Shands medical center are direct
dividends of this collaborative model.

Methods
We examined the collaborative efforts of the DCHD and present

the unique advantages these have brought in the areas of entrenched
data-driven public health service culture, community assessments,
program evaluation, community-based participatory research and
health informatics projects.

Results
Advantages of the model include a data-driven culture with the

balanced scorecard model in leadership and sub-departmental em-
phases on quality assurance in public health services. Activities in
IPHIR include data-driven approaches to program planning and grant
developments, program evaluations, data analyses and impact as-
sessments for the DCHD and other community health stakeholders.

Reports developed by IPHIR have impacted policy formulation by
highlighting the need for sub county level data differentiation to ad-
dress health disparities. Unique community-based mapping of Duval
County into health zones based on health risk factors correlating with
health outcome measures have been published. Other reports high-
light chronic disease surveillance data and health scorecards in spe-
cial populations.

Partnerships with regional higher institutions (University of
Florida, University of North Florida and Florida A&M University)
increased public health service delivery and yielded rich community-
based participatory research opportunities. 

Cutting edge participation in health IT policy implementation led
to the hosting of the fledgling community HIE, the Jacksonville
Health Information Network, as well as leadership in shaping the
landscape of the state HIE. This has immense implications for pub-
lic health surveillance activities as chronic disease surveillance and
public health service research take center stage under new healthcare
payment models amidst increasing calls for quality assurance in pub-
lic health services.

DCHD is currently hosting a CDC-funded fellowship in applied
public health informatics. Some of the projects materializing from
the fellowship are the mapping of the current public health informat-
ics profile of the DCHD, a community based diabetes disease reg-
istry to aid population-based management and surveillance of
diabetes, development of a proposal for a combined primary
care/general preventive medicine residency in UF-Shands Medical
Center, Jacksonville and mobilization of DCHD healthcare providers
for the roll-out of the state-built electronic medical records system
(Florida HMS-EHR).

Conclusions
Academic health centers provide a model of collaboration that di-

rectly impacts on their success in delivering core public health serv-
ices. Disease surveillance is positively affected by the diverse
community affiliations of an academic health department. The aca-
demic health department, as epitomized by DCHD, is also better po-
sitioned to seize up-coming opportunities for local public health
capacity building.

Keywords
Academic Health Departments; collaborative model; health infor-
matics projects

Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by an appointment to the APHIF Pro-
gram administered by CSTE and funded by the CDC Cooperative Agree-
ment 3U38HM000414-04W1.

*Ikechi Konkwo
E-mail: Ikechi_Konkwo@doh.state.fl.us

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e46, 2013