HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Institute of Medicine President Harvey Fineberg have announced the launching of a national initiative to share new community health data with technology leaders and public health officials to assist in the creation of new applications and tools and improve the health of Americans.
The Community Health Data Initiative (CHDI) specifically will turn to Web application developers, mobile phone applications, social media, and other cutting-edge information technologies to “put our public health data to work.”
The Initiative was announced at a Community Health Data Forum on June 2 at the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. According to Secretary Sebelius, by the end of 2010 a new HHS Health Indicators Warehouse will be deployed online providing currently available and new HHS data on national, state, regional, and county health performance – on indicators such as rates of smoking, obesity, diabetes, access to healthy food, and utilization of health care services in a “one stop data shop.”
Users will be able to access all of the data on the website, download it for free, and integrate it into their own sites and applications.
