Development of Occupational Health Indicator Dashboards in an On-Line Data Query System for Public Use

Monday, June 10, 2013: 11:30 AM
102 (Pasadena Convention Center)
Karla Armenti , New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Concord, NH
BACKGROUND:  

Occupational health surveillance encompasses the analysis and dissemination of data on work related injuries and illnesses in the form of indicators.  These include work related hospitalizations, burns, respiratory disease, cancer and fatalities, among others.  Much of this health indicator work traditionally has been organized and presented to stakeholders and consumers either in the form of a health report or stand-alone reports that focus on a specific disease or health outcome.  This type of static reporting has several shortcomings:  its information ages from the moment it is published; users cannot customize the content to meet their needs; benchmarks, targets, and goals cannot be updated once published; the report is not connected directly to source data except through the resource which created the original report; and there is no ability to execute searches for document contents.

To address these shortcomings, the NH Division of Public Health Services has created a new “Web-based Interactive System for Direction and Outcome Measurement,“ or WISDOM that provides easy access to comprehensive information that integrates different data sources to provide a 360 degree picture of the population’s health in aggregated, non-identified format.

METHODS:  

The occupational health data in NH Health WISDOM are organized in dashboards to allow integration of information from different data sources in a way that tells the story of a specific health issue or a specific community in the state. The site also provides resources to improve the health issues identified such as links to local and national sources on prevention of work related injury and illness, and other information on partners working to improve specific health outcomes and more.

RESULTS:  

Dashboards for several occupational health indicators will be presented in an interactive presentation.

CONCLUSIONS:  

Dissemination of on-line interactive occupational health indicators will support stakeholder efforts to determine prevention actions needed, and to improve health status for most New Hampshire workers.