The Institute provides management and technical support to 31 grantees for this initiative to help state and local public health agencies better respond to health threats by improving their use of information systems. The goal of Common Ground is to support collaboration among state and local public health agencies in two areas:
- Analysis and redesign of public health business processes
- Defining collaboratively a set of information system requirements for technology to strengthen public health agencies
Common Ground facilitates the exchange of ideas and best practices in the areas of public health preparedness and chronic disease prevention and control. Additionally, the grants are designed to improve the informatics capacity of grantee organizations.
The Public Health Informatics Institute is the National Program Office for Common Ground: Transforming Public Health Information Systems. Common Ground is a three-year, $15 million national initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). For more information about this national program and the grantees, you can download a fact sheet on the Common Ground program.
"We hope to develop a shared understanding of public health work and identify areas of commonality among public health agencies," said Dave Ross, Sc.D., director of the Common Ground National Program Office at the Public Health Informatics Institute. "The Common Ground program offers public health agencies the opportunity to collaboratively develop requirements for more effective information systems and better data exchange."
Common Ground grantees have been busy; below are photos from recent Workgroup meetings.
