Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #100018

Larry Garrett, MPH, Kansas Integrated Public Health System Project, 650 North 670 East, American Fork, UT 84003, 801-492-1936, lgarrett@kiphs.com

The three basic tenets of communicable disease control are: detection, identification and intervention. Many activities are currently underway to improve the detection and identification of disease through improvement to the nation's public health laboratories and integration of surveillance systems. However, the majority of these improvements have ignored the importance of intervention, the role of local disease investigators and the associated case management activities. Current disease intervention activities are best described as categorical. For example, STD's, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis all have separate intervention strategies even though the underlying workflow associated with case investigations is similar. A commonly heard complaint from local health departments is that that each program is different, has it's own method of investigation and associated disease management system. The problem with these categorical systems is that they are intended as reporting tools and do not support the work tasks associated with disease control. This fundamental shortcoming forces local disease investigators to complete their work twice; once to complete the work associated with controlling disease and second to enter that work into a reporting system.

A project funded by the Kansas Association of Local Health Departments in cooperation with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has recently been completed that has taken a systematic approach to intervention activities associated with disease investigation, case management and the resultant policies and procedures. This was accomplished by working across programs, identifying common workflows and the day-to-day business practice associated with disease management. This presentation reports on the findings of this project.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session the participants will be able to

• Recognize the need for standard case investigation technique between investigators;
• Identify methods to develop standard case investigation protocols;
• Understand methods and tool sets used to identify the underlying business rules and processes associated with case management activities.

Keywords: Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commertial supporters WITH THE EXCEPTION OF I am a partner in KIPHS, Inc., a public health consulting and software development company.

Recorded presentation