LHDs are operating in a changing data environment. As household telephone use declines, national surveys are not sampling large enough populations to report representative local health statistics. As a result, reliable indicators from surveys such as the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) are becoming scarce. Soon, these indicators may not be sufficient for county assessments. NC DETECT primarily uses data from emergency departments, the Carolinas Poison Center, and the Pre-hospital Medical Information System (PreMIS) to identify outbreaks and facilitate emergency response. However, while built to aggregate “real-time” data, NC DETECT also provides a source for rich, long-term indicators. The challenge for LHDs is that they may not have the knowledge, training, or technical assistance needed to fully utilize NC DETECT services. This project capitalizes on available human, organizational, and technical resources to increase LHD situational awareness and to demonstrate the usefulness of both “real-time” surveillance data as aggregate indicators of county health, and of low-cost prototyping using Excel’s more advanced Business Intelligence (BI) features.
Objective
This project aims to fill a growing county-level health data gap through the development of a low-cost, Excel-based surveillance tool. This prototype utilizes emergency department data (ED) collected by NC DETECT, a state-wide syndromic surveillance system, in order to visualize, monitor, and compare annual local health indicators for use in local decision making. In this way, the project aims to increase noncommunicable disease surveillance capacity and improve situational awareness within North Carolina local health departments (LHDs).