Public Health Informatics Capacity Building at Utah State Department of Health

Informatics staffing challenges at all levels of the state agencies have been identified as a common barrier for public health informatics (PHI) advancement. Academicians developed curricula and training courses for limited number of trainees; how to improve state public health PHI capacity has not been fully addressed. Utah Department of Health (UDOH) explored several methods to empower not-formally-trained practicing informaticians. The methods include building PHI positions into the organizational structure, establishing standards for excellence in PHI practice, and learning through doing. UDOH established an "e-health=Utah" executive council and an Office of Public Health Informatics in 2007 to coordinate enterprise-wide informatics initiatives and lead the PHI capacity building. In the State of Utah, all IT personnel are centralized in Department of Technology Services. No job classification for informaticians exists. Lack of PHI personnel to manage IT projects was the major risk factor for previous project failures. Therefore to build the PHI profession at the state becomes a priority. UDOH is working with Department of Human Resource Management to create a new career track for health informaticians. To build PHI capacity, UDOH formed a recognition committee to acknowledge excellence in developing and improving information systems and holds monthly PHI brown bags for peer interactions. Best practice, innovations, and lessons learned are shared among program managers, IT programmers, epidemiologists and analysts. When front-line practitioners are connected, self-initiated collaborations among silo systems emerge. Joint grant applications were submitted. Doing PHI projects is also an effective way of learning PHI, especially collaborating with researchers. UDOH benefits from the researchers-led development of Child Health Advance Records Management (CHARM) system, health grid pilot and using EMR for diseases reporting projects. Educators are able to use the real-world's problems in their teaching, training, and research. PHI workforce building is a joint task for PHI researchers and practitioners.