The Nebraska public health system has timely, accurate and relevant public health data.

Why Is This Important?

Numerous health-related data are available in Nebraska. This objective focused on increasing the timely reporting of accurate and relevant public health data. This can be accomplished through the development of interactive web-based tools, prioritization and improved communication.

Story Behind the Curve

Nebraska SHIP Priority 5: The Nebraska public health system has expanded capacity to collect, analyze and report health data.

For this SHIP Priority, several activities were planned for implementation:

Expand public health data through interactive web-based tools
Develop public health data facts sheets and make available to the public
Implement processes to increase awareness of public health data availability.

Strategy

One strategy to achieve these SHIP activities is to establish performance dashboards for the SHIP and for the Nebraska Healthy People 2020. Performance dashboards are utilized to share goals, relevant data, activities intended to impact the goals, and performance measures that indicate and track the level of achievement. The Division of Public Health-Office of Community Health and Performance Management developed performance these dashboards utilizing the Results Based Accountability framework and scorecard, and is partnering with two local health departments and two other Division programs to pilot the use of performance dashboards for there activities as well. The SHIP and Nebraska Healthy People 2020 dashboards went live in September 2015.

These electronic scorecards provide access to SHIP and Nebraska Healthy People 2020 public health data with ease, and the ability to track progress of the health indicators as well as programmatic activities implemented by the Division of Public Health and SHIP partners to improve the health and well-being of Nebraskans.

Another strategy to improve access to public health data is to update the Nebraska Public Health Joint Data Center's data inventory. Public health practitioners often rely on health data in order to research health problems and evaluate public health interventions. The Public Health Data Inventory was developed in 2011 to help increase awareness of existing data related to public health, as well as to simplify the process for data requests. In 2015, a project to update the Public Health Data Inventory was begun in order to ensure accurate information and descriptions are available about these public health data sets. The website is currently being redesigned to improve access and completeness of information within the Data Inventory, and is expected to be launched for public use by calendar year end 2015.

Click here to access the Public Health Data Inventory: http://dhhs.ne.gov/publichealth/DataCenter/Pages/I...

Definition

This scorecard is created to track performance, therefore the demonstration of data (numerical and narrative) describes what we define as success. In some instances, a trend may be moving in the wrong direction, but still may be within our 'Target for Success' area. The use of Color Arrows (and sometimes also Color Bands) help to define the Target for Success and Current Progress.

Green, Black and Red color arrows are used to reflect our 'Current Progress' status.

GREEN Arrow = We're getting better!
BLACK Arrow = We're maintaining our position.
RED Arrow = We're going in the wrong direction.

Green, Yellow or Red color bands are used to reflect our 'Target for Success' zones.

GREEN Color Band = We've reached our Target for Success!
YELLOW Color Band = We're making progress, but not quite there yet.
RED Color Band = We're below our Target for Success.

Data is described with the Time Period, Actual Value, Target Value, Current Trend and Baseline Change %. These mean:

Time Period - The most current time period for which the data were available.
Actual Value - The actual level of achievement, the most current data point for the indicator; also shown in a Color Band to reflect if that value is or is not within our Target for Success zone.
Target Value - The desired level of achievement for the rate of that data indicator.
Current Trend - The direction of progress is shown by a Color Arrow to reflect our Current Progress status, and also noting for how many data points the direction been occurring.
Baseline Change % - The percentage of change between the baseline data point and the current data point (actual value); also shown with a Color Arrow to describe Current Progress status.

Clear Impact Suite is an easy-to-use, web-based software platform that helps your staff collaborate with external stakeholders and community partners by utilizing the combination of data collection, performance reporting, and program planning.