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NYC Macroscope: Using EHRs to Monitor Population Health
Shawn Eastridge
In an effort to determine how public health can use EHRs to analyze population health trends, New York City is developing the NYC Macroscope, a population health surveillance system that uses EHRs to track chronic conditions managed by primary care practices. The NYC Macroscope guide, Developing an Electronic Health Record-Based Population Health Surveillance System, outlines the methods that will be used to gather and analyze EHR data on priority health indicators such as chronic disease risk factors, prevalence, treatment, and control.

This project comes at a critical time as our healthcare system moves towards full EHR adoption, and the partnership between public health and healthcare continues to grow. Public health practitioners need to be able to point to specific data that accurately reflects population health trends in order to influence health policy changes and implement disease prevention strategies within communities. Traditionally, public health relies heavily on expensive and time-intensive surveys to gather meaningful population health data, but with the current rate of EHR implementation, public health has timely access to a wealth of population health data. The NYC Macroscope project seeks to validate that EHRs can provide public health practitioners with timely, meaningful data, leading to more timely interventions and policy action.

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PHII Director Vivian Singletary shares her reflections on the past year and looks forward to what 2026 holds.
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Reflections on 2024 and looking forward to the new year
PHII Director Vivian Singletary celebrates our 2024 public health wins and gets ready for the opportunities and challenges in the new year.
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How Fairfax County’s health department tackled data modernization challenges
In this video, Fairfax County Health Department shared how they’ve tackled various data modernization challenges.
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Communication plays a key role in successful data modernization planning
Shawn Eastridge provides examples of public health jurisdictions emphasizing how communication is key to a successful data modernization plan.
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A use case in IIS considerations for DMI, from Michigan
The Michigan Care Improvement Registry (MCIR) team offers an example of considerations immunization information system (IIS) teams may have when working to align with data modernization goals.
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Task Force employees celebrated The Task Force's 40th anniversary on March 14, 2024.
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Tonya Duhart Miller, Associate Director of Business Operations at PHII, celebrates International Women’s Month
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Stories chronicle success in improving child and adolescent mental health
Lina Saintus highlights successful ways public health organizations have used data to measure and improve child and adolescent mental health (CAMH).
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