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Case Studies

IPHFI Response Capacity Inventory

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been at the forefront of assisting state and local public health agencies assess their ability to respond to public health threats and emergencies. The CDC’s Public Health Preparedness and Response Capacity Inventory is a resource used to assess the preparedness of local health departments by focus area, critical benchmark, critical capacity, and six cross-cutting issues (planning, staffing and training, assessment and evaluation, relationships, communication, and surge capacity).

The Illinois Public Health Futures Institute (IPHFI) was charged with rapidly deploying the Inventory to all local health departments throughout the state. CADE’s Research Data Management group worked with IPHFI to achieve this goal by using .ASP technology to create a web-based version of the Inventory. Each local health department was provided with unique IDs and passwords to access their own online inventory for data entry and editing. Data was collected into a common Microsoft SQL Server database and output to a SAS data set. CADE scheduled training and technical support to support the online Inventory’s release, and guided representatives from local health departments throughout this start-up process. SAS statistical analysis software was used to score and analyze the data, based on the algorithm provided by the CDC.

“CADE has done an outstanding job on our Local Public Health Preparedness and Response Capacity Inventory,” says Elissa J. Bassler, IPHFI’s Executive Director. “From developing and supporting a web-based data submission system to producing analysis and reports, the Research Data Management group has consistently delivered. They complete their work on time under very tight deadlines, are flexible and responsive, and to top it all off, are easy to work with. We'll certainly work with them on other projects.”

Maps, graphs, and tables for online and print presentation were created using SAS/Graph, SAS/IntrNet, and Output Delivery System (ODS) technology. Data were averaged for each of the Public Health Regional Response Planning Areas (PH-RRePA) and presented in a 100-page report that was distributed to the Illinois Department of Public Health and across the state. To assist planning strategies at the local level, web reports were made available to allow each local health department to obtain its own results and compare them with its PH-RRePA and the rest of the state.

The result: Improved preparedness assessment and evaluation at the local level.

Features

  • Convenient, online data submission form
  • User-specific IDs and passwords for security
  • SAS/IntrNet technology for making reports available online
  • SAS/Graph and Output Delivery System (ODS) mapping and charting
  • Reliable and timely project management and technical support

For more information about CADE's data management services for research projects, contact research@cade.uic.edu.