Open Data Initiatives in Chicago as an Impetus for Development of a Standardized Approach to Preparing and Delivering Public Health Surveillance Data

Brief Summary The City of Chicago's Data Portal is dedicated to promoting access to government data and encouraging the development of creative tools to engage and serve Chicago's diverse community. The site hosts over 800 datasets presented in easy-to-use formats about City departments, services, facilities and performance. The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) generates and many types of data, including records related to regulatory functions (e.g., food service establishment inspections) and healthcare delivery (e.g., flu shot clinic sites). To make public health surveillance data available, CDPH established an approach for the reporting of indicators by geographic units (i.e., community area or postal ZIP code). The procedure involves using case definitions that enhance comparability to Healthy People or other benchmarks; generating appropriate population denominators; calculating confidence intervals for estimates; applying safeguards against re-identification of individuals, and documenting metadata and limitations. Eighteen datasets related to births, deaths, environmental health, infectious disease, chronic disease, and community social and economic attributes have been published on the Data Portal. Uses of the data have included research, news and blog articles, and websites, including the Chicago Health Atlas.