A Community Health Record: Improving Health Through Multisector Collaboration, Information Sharing, and Technology

Area of Science:

• Community Health
• Health Informatics
• Public Health Systems

Background:

• Existing health record systems lack comprehensive multisectoral data integration for community-level health improvement.
• There is a need for a collaborative framework that bridges social and technical aspects of community health data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel framework for developing a community health record (CHR).
• To facilitate multisector collaboration and information sharing for collective community health improvement.
• To define a methodology and infrastructure for integrating diverse data sources into actionable health information.

Main Methods:

• Developed an iterative and participatory framework integrating social and technical components.
• Proposed a methodology for bringing together multisector stakeholders and their data.
• Designed an infrastructure for data integration and transformation at various geographic scales.

Main Results:

• The community health record framework facilitates multisector collaboration and information sharing.
• The framework enables the integration and transformation of multisector data into actionable information.
• The CHR system provides information at granular levels, from address to zip code.

Conclusions:

• The proposed community health record framework offers a unique approach to enhancing community health.
• This model emphasizes communal ownership and social complexity, differentiating it from traditional health records.
• The framework supports informed decision-making, targeting, monitoring, and evaluation of community health initiatives.