Enhancing data surveillance of health disparities in a state public health agency using quality improvement processes

There is a renewed focus on improving population health that looks at health equity as a major contributing factor. An enhanced statewide data infrastructure is a key element in ensuring that data collected on health and related social status are accurate, standardized, and complete. At the Connecticut Department of Public Health (CT DPH), a quality improvement (QI) process was used to find solutions to a data quality problem pertaining to the collection of race, ethnicity, gender, and age information. This QI effort ties in with the agency's strategic plan and is linked to the health equity initiatives strongly supported by the agency. The QI initiative, conducted April to November 2012, identified databases that were not compliant with the 2008 CT DPH Policy on Collecting Sociodemographic Data. The policy, which set standards for the collection of sociodemographic data, is based on the 1997 federal Office of Management and Budget directive 15. Modifications to databases would increase the capacity of sharing, comparing, and analyzing data across databases to better understand health disparities in CT. During the project, five major DPH databases were modified, increasing the compliance rate from 4% to 10%, a better than expected result. In addition, an important outcome of the QI initiative was a list of recommendations and action items to senior leadership that centered on enhancing the quality of sociodemographic data collected and reported by the agency. This presentation will address the successes and challenges of implementing the action items as a continuous QI process and plan.