Layout 1 ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2012. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ISDS 2012 Conference Abstracts Disease Surveillance and Achieving Synergy In Public Health Quality Improvement Peggy A. Honoré*1 and Laura C. Streichert2 1U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC, USA; 2International Society for Disease Surveillance, Brighton, MA, USA Objective To examine disease surveillance in the context of a new national framework for public health quality and to solicit input from practi- tioners, researchers, and other stakeholders to identify potential met- rics, pivotal research questions, and actions for achieving synergy between surveillance practice and public health quality. Introduction National efforts to improve quality in public health are closely tied to advancing capabilities in disease surveillance. Measures of public health quality provide data to demonstrate how public health pro- grams, services, policies, and research achieve desired health out- comes and impact population health. They also reveal opportunities for innovations and improvements. Similar quality improvement ef- forts in the health care system are beginning to bear fruit. There has been a need, however, for a framework for assessing public health quality that provides a standard, yet is flexible and relevant to agen- cies at all levels. The U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assis- tant Secretary for Health, working with stakeholders, recently devel- oped and released a Consensus Statement on Quality in the Public Health System that introduces a novel evaluation framework. They identified nine aims that are fundamental to public health quality im- provement efforts and six cross-cutting priority areas for improve- ment, including population health metrics and information technology; workforce development; and evidence-based practices (1). Applying the HHS framework to surveillance expands measures for surveillance quality beyond typical variables (e.g., data quality and analytic capabilities) to desired characteristics of a quality pub- lic health system. The question becomes: How can disease surveil- lance help public health services to be more population centered, equitable, proactive, health-promoting, risk-reducing, vigilant, trans- parent, effective, and efficient—the desired features of a quality pub- lic health system? Any agency with a public health mission, or even a partial public health mission (e.g., tax-exempt hospitals), can use these measures to develop strategies that improve both the quality of the surveillance enterprise and public health systems, overall. At this time, input from stakeholders is needed to identify valid and feasible ways to measure how surveillance systems and practices advance public health qual- ity. What exists now and where are the gaps? Methods Improving public health by applying quality measures to disease surveillance will require innovation and collaboration among stake- holders. This roundtable will begin a community dialogue to spark this process. The first goal will be to achieve a common focus by defining the nine quality aims identified in the HHS Consensus State- ment. Attendees will draw from their experience to discuss how sur- veillance practice advances the public health aims and improves public health. We will also identify key research questions needed to provide evidence to inform decision-making. Results The roundtable will discuss how the current state of surveillance practice addresses each of the aims described in the Consensus State- ment to create a snapshot of how surveillance contributes to public health quality and begin to articulate practical measures for assessing quality improvements. Sample questions to catalyze discussion in- clude: —How is surveillance used to identify and address health dispar- ities and, thereby, make public health more equitable? What are the data sources? Are there targets? How can research and evaluation help to enhance this surveillance capability and direct action? —How do we identify and address factors that inhibit quality im- provement in surveillance? What are the gaps in knowledge, skills, systems, and resources? —Where can standardization play a positive role in the evaluation of quality in public health surveillance? —How can we leverage resources by aligning national, state, and local goals? —What are the key research questions and the quality improve- ment projects that can be implemented using recognized models for improvement? —How can syndromic surveillance, specifically, advance the pri- ority aims? The roundtable will conclude with a list of next steps to develop metrics that resonate with the business practices of public health at all levels. Keywords public health quality; metrics; framework References 1. Honoré PA, Wright D, Berwick DM, Clancy CM, Lee P, Nowinski J, Koh HK. Creating a framework for getting quality into the public health system. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011 Apr;30(4):737-45. *Peggy A. Honoré E-mail: Peggy.Honore@hhs.gov Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * 5(1):e195, 2013