Health Trends Across Communities: Engaging Healthcare Systems, Public Health and Community in a Statewide Public Health Tool

Context: Building patients’ and health professionals’ trust in health research includes responsibly sharing health information. Health Trends Across Communities (HTAC) is an innovative health data surveillance project that provides public health professionals, healthcare systems, researchers, community organizations, and policy makers with robust and timely summary electronic health record (EHR) information to support health equity and improve health across Minnesota.

Objective: To use an iterative, community-engaged process to inform the development of the publicly-available HTAC dashboard.

Study Design and Analysis: Qualitative descriptive.

Setting: A partnership between the Minnesota Electronic Health Record Consortium (MNEHRC), public health professionals at the Center for Community Health (CCH), and Hennepin County Public Health. MNEHRC includes 11 of the largest healthcare systems that provide and track summary prevalence EHR data, representing care for 90% of MN residents, including people experiencing homelessness and incarceration and people enrolled in Medicaid.

Population Studied: A heath system-public health collaboration focused on Minnesota residents.

Intervention/Instrument: NA.

Outcome Measures: Selected health conditions to include in HTAC dashboard; themes and examples of the needs, concerns, and suggestions.

Results: MNEHRC selected 45 health conditions, which the CCH scored based on public health significance, alignment with health priorities, and potential for action. 25 health conditions were selected for the HTAC dashboard. Meetings with 30 organizational partners identified the need for materials and resources available in formats that appeal to health professionals and the public and dashboard feedback sessions with a range of potential users. Resulting resources were drafted, circulated, and finalized with partners’ input and include written project summaries, an overview presentation, technical definitions, and FAQs plus project overview and dashboard demonstration videos. Modifications to the dashboard based on feedback sessions and collaborative evaluation activities will be described.

Conclusions: HTAC used collaborative, community-engaged approaches to support the development of a new health data resource that responds to community partners’ needs and promotes dashboard accessibility and utilization by a wide range of health professionals and community members.