The Joint Public Health Informatics Taskforce (JPHIT) provides a common voice in public health informatics for a more robust enterprise capable of better protecting the population. JPHIT consists of an Executive Board made up of elected representatives and alternates from the following core organizations:
• The Association of Public Health Laboratories
• The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (www.astho.org)
• The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (www.cste.org)
• The National Association of County and City Health Officials (www.naccho.org)
• The National Association of Health Data Organizations (www.nahdo.org)
• The National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems (www.naphsis.org)
• The Public Health Data Standards Consortium (www.phdsc.org)
JPHIT seeks to unify the public health message in the context of growing and moving towards accrediting public health departments with specific capabilities and to provide measured performance improvement in the area of health information exchange.
The taskforce is working on an action plan for a unified framework and roadmap for public health informatics across the entire public health enterprise. The plan will include representing public health interests at various national health information exchange initiatives. A coordinated education strategy and communications plan should also be developed and implemented.