![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.jpg)
Key Objectives:
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will provide an overview of results from the development and use of viral hepatitis epidemiologic profiles piloted in three states, outline the evaluation framework developed to assess impact and utility, and share lessons learned. Participants will be invited to consider questions of scalability, feasibility and planning for implementation of hepatitis epidemiologic profiles in their own jurisdictions, discuss opportunities for leveraging data from various sources to complement traditional surveillance, and share examples of innovative approaches to use data to communicate about viral hepatitis.
Brief Summary:
Robust data for viral hepatitis is critical in assisting health agencies broker partnerships with other governmental agencies, healthcare providers, and communities to assure availability of high quality services along the treatment cascade from testing to cure. However, insufficient surveillance capacity often limits the availability of high quality data for public health action. Health agencies can augment surveillance data and promote innovative uses of traditional data sources through the development of viral hepatitis epidemiologic profiles. Modeled after the HIV/AIDS profiles developed by CDC in the 1990s, these viral hepatitis epidemiologic profiles are an important tool in documenting, interpreting, and framing the epidemiology of hepatitis B and C in local terms. ASTHO and CDC funded three state health agencies to pilot the development and use of viral hepatitis epidemiologic profiles. The pilot states 1) engaged critical stakeholders to identify data needs, review preliminary data, and evaluate utility; 2) identified, analyzed, and interpreted data from various sources, including hospital discharge data, vital records, and cancer registries; and 3) maximized dissemination opportunities by including data from the profile in an array of communication formats. Based on preliminary findings from the pilot projects, CDC seeks to expand development of epidemiologic profiles in the states. The pilot efforts concluded in 2014, and the resulting epidemiologic profiles have been used to heighten awareness and drive decision making, serving as a catalyst for action around policies and programs at the state and local levels.