The HHS Draft Strategic Plan for 2018-2022 puts a high priority on the need for improved data resources and surveillance. The HHS goal for improved data and surveillance is to develop innovative solutions for population health monitoring, assessing risks, and to analyze epidemiological data to support a data driven approach to emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.
The strategic plan calls for HHS to develop state, federal, and international partnerships to provide surveillance across the continuum of care. This is needed to control infectious disease threats, healthcare-associated infections, antimicrobial resistant pathogens, environmental health hazards, plus address other threats to public health and health security.
In addition, the draft strategic plan calls for:
- Improving both domestic and global capacity for influenza surveillance to ensure rapid detection and reporting of cases or outbreaks of influenza viruses
- Promoting the use of youth-focused surveillance and data collection to inform school and community actions that will improve the health of adolescents
- Collecting behavioral health survey and surveillance data to establish trends particularly in response to local or national disasters along with localized public health threats
- Strengthening understanding of the opioid crisis through better public health surveillance so clinical management decisions can be made for patients
The goal is to greatly improve information sharing and exchange which requires solutions to support the timely exchange of information among local, state, international, and federal agencies, healthcare facilities, and laboratories. This would essentially require the modernization of surveillance systems, improve system interoperability, make more rapid reporting available, and provide for efficient and accurate data exchange.
Go to https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/hhs-draft-strategic-plan-fy2018-2022.pdf to view the entire plan “HHS Draft Strategic Plan for FY2018-2022” released September 2017. Email comments on the draft plan by October 27, 2017 to HHSPlan@hhs.gov.