Our local Santa Cruz County health department traditionally relied on existing infrastructure to conduct regular business operations related to mandated disease surveillance. Employed legacy systems provide a limited snapshot of disease spread and often are lacking in vital information necessary to achieve positive outcomes. Health information organizations (HIOs) are often much more data-rich than standard public health surveillance systems. By combining the expertise of our public health department in epidemiology and biostatistics with the innovative health IT tools offered by SCHIO, both organizations and the community benefit by having access to a more robust longitudinal health record with important data our public health department can use to better mitigate disease spread while also identifying equity gaps that may otherwise go unseen.
Please join us in hearing how the County of Santa Cruz Public Health Division uniquely works with SCHIO to improve population and community health including pursuing opportunities for improvement in achieving health equity by accurately describing which factors lead to outcomes.