Please join my INTERFACE:ATL networking event THIS WEDNESDAY, April 2nd from 6:30-8:00 pm at the Marriott Courtyard lobby bar, 130 Clairemont Ave. in Decatur.
Meet health informatics peers to learn who’s doing what. Several state epidemiologists will likely be on hand. Free to attend, pay own food and drink. See you Wednesday!
Please share as desired with those interested in health informatics. I look forward to seeing you in Decatur September 19.
Hard on the heels of my own departure from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on September 30 comes a clean sweep of high-level informatics leaders in the organization. Sources now confirm that James Buehler, MD the current Director of the Public Health Surveillance and Informatics Program Office (PHSIPO) will depart before year’s end. His supervisor, PHS Rear Admiral (ret.) Steven Thacker, a long-time advocate for cross-cutting integration, is also slated to leave his post as Director of the Office for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services (OSELS). These departures follow at least three years of marked funding reductions at CDC’s informatics core.
[Update 12/11/12: We’ve learned Dr. Buehler is departing for family reasons, and Dr. Thacker for health reasons. Friends and colleagues of Dr. Thacker can connect with him and his family here.]
Few signals indicate the future direction for informatics at the Agency. Acting leadership for OSELS will be placed in the hands of Denise Cardo, MD, director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, and Dan Jernigan MD, MPH of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) as her deputy. While Buehler and I were recruited from outside CDC, both of the new OSELS leads come from powerful National Centers in CDC’s Office of Infectious Disease. This may (but also may not) indicate a plan to redistribute the OSELS portfolio across the National Centers (sometimes called “Silos of Excellence”).
The timing for an apparent leadership vacuum and dwindling resources could not be worse. It comes in the middle of a massive one-time Federal investment of tens of billions of dollars in healthcare information technology and exchange. Standardization engendered by the “Meaningful Use” electronic health record incentive program could enable major progress in public health programs if two conditions are met. First, cash-strapped local and state public health agencies must make it a priority to migrate to new, more uniform standards and must have the resources to do so. Second, critical public health requirements for information exchange must be successfully negotiated with cost-averse healthcare providers and their information system vendors. Neither can be accomplished without dedicated leadership and resources. The need for a confident, skillful, flexible and funded approach to public health information exchange with healthcare providers has never been greater. We anxiously await the announcement of both new a new informatics vision and stable leadership at CDC.
I recently attended the 25th anniversary celebration for the Mectizan (ivermectin) Donation Program (http://www.mectizan.org/). Today the program is closing in on eliminating onchocerciasis, or river blindness, in several nations. President Jimmy Carter, former Merck CEO Roy Vagelos and former CDC director and Task Force for Global Health founder Bill Foege took the stage to recall how the program was born and succeeded out of a combination of luck and determination. Each admitted having no clear idea about how to realize the program at first, and each offered grains of wisdom learned since.
Dr. Vagelos recalled that the decision to give Mectizan away, as much and for as long as needed to combat onchocerciasis, was made for lack of an ethical alternative, though several were explored. Unexpectedly rapid regulatory approval and high expectations forced the executive decision even before the Merck board could be consulted. The decision had an unexpected long-term impact. Chemists, doctors, even factory workers flocked to Merck to work for the company with a clear moral compass. Merck did well by doing right.
President Carter said the program illustrates the oft-overlooked power of volunteers. The distribution of Mectizan is powered by local volunteers worldwide, including Lions Clubs who mobilize a small army of local business and community leaders in most nations touched by the disease.
Mectizan 25th Anniversary Event
Dr. Foege suggested that this program’s success, in contrast to many other public health campaigns, illustrates Sutton’s lesser known second law: “I get more done with a gentle voice and a revolver than with a gentle voice alone.”(1) An effective tool made the difference. “After people took Mectizan, some had the first itch-free day that they could ever remember,” Foege said. This rapid, obvious improvement in quality of life for some helped sell the drug’s benefits to all.
These lessons should give heart to informaticians who are rapidly prototyping, piloting and iterating real tools in the field, and those using volunteers (such as in open source development) to shape the work collectively. An application that “scratches the itch,” brings rapid uptake and success. Vaporous promises and endless planning likely have the opposite effect. We must not underestimate the power of the “revolver” in the hand over well-intentioned talk, nor the power of volunteers motivated by their communities’ needs.
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Notes: (1) Paraphrased. I could not find attribution of this remark to Mr. Sutton, though he is quoted “You can’t rob a bank on charm and personality,” which carries the same message!
Pictured in the photograph L to R: Dr. William Foege, Dr. Roy Vagelos, President Jimmy Carter, moderator and Task Force for Global Health President/CEO Mark Rosenberg.
Additional information on the 25th anniversary event available at http://www.mectizan.org/news/mectizan-donation-program-celebrates-25-years-of-partnership-and-progress .
Keywords: public health informatics, Seth Foldy, health informatics, open source, Jimmy Carter, William Foege, Roy Vangelos