A Symposium in The NIC of Time

Time: 12:00 – 1:30 pm ET

125+ Registered

On Friday, Nov. 6, over 125 participants joined our webinar to learn about the progress we’re making on Project Unify, NIC’s proof-of-concept implementation initiative. Members of our Let’s Get Technical group led a conversation and provide an update on Unify, including its integral role in our latest initiative, the National Action Agenda to Advance Upstream Social Determinants and Health Equity.

The webinar presentation, featuring leaders of NIC’s Let’s Get Technical Team Brian Handspicker and Eric Jahn, charted Project Unify’s progress and roadmapped the next several months. Additionally, the LGT team demonstrated some exciting new developments in connecting multiple systems.

Mary Kratz, EVP of the Interoperability Institute, wrote the blog we shared before this webinar. Please review this important and insightful contribution to the Project Unify work.

Also, a video recording of the webinar and the slide deck have been shared via the buttons above.

About the Presenters:

Daniel Stein, President of the Stewards of Change Institute (SOCI), and Co-Principal Investigator for the National Interoperability Collaborative (NIC)

Daniel Stein is President of the Stewards of Change Institute (SOCI), a unique not-for-profit think tank and advocacy/implementation organization. He is also Co-Principal Investigator for the National Interoperability Collaborative (NIC), a new “Community of Networks” initiative led by SOCI and AcademyHealth. For over a decade, Stein has been a thought-leader, educator, consultant and advocate in promoting and implementing interoperability and information-sharing by working nationally in the private and public sectors – at the local, state and federal levels – to instigate systemic change. Through the Stewards of Change Consultancy, which is the implementation arm of SOCI, Stein also has provided his expertise and experience nationally to create the strategies, operational regimes, tools, trainings and materials needed to achieve tangible results and fulfill the Institute’s mission.

Eric Jahn, CTO, HSLynk

Eric has been working to enable human services web interoperability since 2002, participating in the development of numerous human services web data standards. Moreover, open source implementation of these standards continues to be a primary focus of his work, to create sustainable, transparent, and maintainable resources for communities to better serve the public. hslynk.com is his latest effort: an open source human services Platform as a Service, for powering a marketplace of real-time human services apps. Eric received a Masters in Public Administration from The Mark Hatfield School of Government in Portland, Oregon, and a BA from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Brian D. Handspicker, CTO, Open City Labs, Inc.

Brian is a subject matter expert on mapping and modeling of information between clinical healthcare standards and non-clinical information domains such as human services, education and justice. He specializes in secure and private exchange of sensitive and personally identifying information (PII). Brian is actively involved in current interoperability standards efforts, including the National Action Agenda, National Interoperability Collaborative Project Unify, Project Gravity (SDOH) Technical Advisors Committee, CAQH Core V, W3C Human Services, and NIEM Technical Architecture Committee (NTAC). Brian is Chief Technology Officer for Open City Labs (OCL). OCL delivers interoperable community exchange for human services and health service information.

160+ Registered

Lead Presenter: Amber Ivey, Manager, Civil Legal System Modernization, The Pew Charitable Trusts

The Data as a Strategic Asset project at The Pew Charitable Trusts was created to understand how state governments are using administrative data and how they might use it more effectively to determine which policies to enact and what public problems to address. As state leaders seek to harness data in innovative ways, the project sought to learn what common themes, noteworthy successes, and notable challenges the 50 states and Washington, DC have experienced across a broad cross section of issue areas.

5 key actions states can take to promote data-driven decision-making:

Pew interviewed over 350 state leaders across the U.S. and reviewed relevant laws, documents, and policies in all the states to produce a report detailing five key actions states can take to promote data-driven decision-making:

• Plan ahead by setting up guiding goals and structures.
• Build the state government’s capacity to effectively use data.
• Ensure that quality data can be accessed and used by stakeholders.
• Analyze data to create meaningful information.
• Sustain support for continued data efforts.

In this first comprehensive overview of how state governments utilize data, the authors identified states that had implemented a combination, or even all five, of these actions in different policy areas. However, no state has applied them to a broad range of government agencies or achieved widespread improvements in policy development, service delivery, resource management, and current program evaluation.

What you will learn during the webinar:

1. A fresh understanding of the challenges facing state governments today.
2. Insights on how state governments can capitalize on the five key actions to promote data-driven decision-making.
3. Join the NIC Hub and post comments/questions you have for the report’s authors.

Check out the blog post: Innovative Information-Sharing: Administrative Data as a Strategic Asset

1:00 – 2:30 PM ET

Via Webinar and Conference Call Access (Registrants-Only)

About the Webinar:

Our next Deeper Dive webinar will focus on the critical importance of “getting upstream” to more-effectively combat the most-devastating public health crisis in modern U.S. history. The presentations by our three expert panelists – along with other special guests – will include discussion of the just-published NIC Opioid Use Disorder Prevention Playbook, which examines replicable strategies being tested across the country to accomplish that goal. Learn more about the Playbook in our latest blog and on the NIC Collaboration Hub.

Registration for the webinar is now open, so reserve your spot today. We’ve designed our Deeper Dive presentations to go beyond the traditional webinar format in order to expand the opportunity for ongoing learning and to facilitate networking with others interested in the topic. Learn more about this exciting webinar format in “About the NIC Deeper Dive” webinar series below.

Presenters:

• Karen Smith, MD, MPH, Director, California Department of Public Health
• Mary Ann Cooney, MPH, MSN, Chief, Center for Population Health Strategies, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
• Paul Wormeli, President, Wormeli Consulting; member, Stewards of Change Institute Board of Directors; primary author, NIC Opioid Use Disorder Prevention Playbook

Moderator: Daniel Stein, President, Stewards of Change Institute; Co-PI, NIC

About the NIC Deeper Dive Webinar Series: We’ve designed these presentations to go beyond the traditional webinar format in order to expand the opportunity for ongoing learning and facilitate networking with others interested in the topic of the event. There are two unique aspects to our “Deeper Dive” webinar-plus series, using the new Collaboration and Communication Hub.

• Before each webinar, we’ll publish a blog that includes key discussion points relating to the subject being examined. Readers will be invited to go to the NIC Hub to ask questions, offer insights and engage in discussions that extend the learning from the blog and inform the webinar’s content.
• Q&A will begin on the webinar platform after presentations, but the learning won’t end there. Rather, attendees can continue interacting with our expert presenters – and to engage in an ongoing conversation with other attendees/colleagues – by jumping to the NIC Hub.

Our webinar-plus series takes a different approach because it aims for a different outcome. It is designed to be an integral part of an ongoing, action-oriented agenda to advance interoperability and data-sharing. The objective of all of NIC’s work is to provide the information, tools and other resources needed to improve systems and increase collaboration among the multiple domains that impact health and well-being. Learn more about the primary domains in which NIC works. If you have any questions or comments, write to nic@stewardsofchange.org.

Takeaways:

Check out more murals highlighting key takeaways in the resources matrix below.

About the Symposium:

“A Symposium in the NIC of Time: Moving Upstream to Improve Health and Well-Being” convened a select group of senior officials, thought leaders, luminaries and subject-matter experts from New England and other parts of the country where NIC is currently working. Participants also included NIC’s federal and Region 1 collaborators from the Administration for Children and Families and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The event was organized by NIC and the New England States Consortium Systems Organization, with the support of the Kresge Foundation, IBM, the Connecticut Department of Social Services, the New England Association of Child Welfare Commissioners and Directors and the Milbank Memorial Fund.

The symposium “faculty” included prominent leaders in the field, including Connecticut DSS Commissioner Rod Bremby, California HHS Secretary Michael Wilkening and former Virginia Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Hazel, MD; federal ACF officials leading the agency’s new Interoperability Action Plan; and highly regarded academics from MIT, Yale and UC San Francisco. Additional participants include thought-leaders such as Jessica Kahn, Senior Expert from McKinsey & Co; John Ohanian, CEO of San Diego County’s renowned 211 community-information exchange; Rhea Boyd, MD, Director of Equity and Justice for Children’s Trust – all of whom helped to make the event a particularly rewarding experience.

Our broad strategic thinking at the symposium was grounded in real-life case study examples that demonstrated the critical importance of better integration, data-sharing and interoperability – with a particular focus on collaborations within and across NIC’s six primary domains: human services, public health, public education, public safety, emergency medical services and health information technology.

Information at the symposium was shared through diverse presentation formats and interactive activities that engaged participants in meaningful discussion, ideation and planning. The use cases included new early childhood programs that are integrating early intervention from health and human services; prevention models in child welfare that reduce opioid use disorder and addiction; and upstream strategies that integrate two-generation models and the social determinants of health and well-being by leveraging existing and new technology. All of the diverse presentations had a singular goal: improving the lives and experiences of the people we serve.

Photo Gallery:

Access the Webinar Audio, Slides and Related Resources:

»» NEW Webinar PowerPoint
»» NEW Webinar podcast
»» Webinar SDOH research report
»» More resources

About the Webinar:

A comprehensive new report examines a broad range of evidence and issues relating to health care in Canada, with insights and recommendations on reforms designed to bring that country’s health-related systems into the 21^st Century. In this webinar, two of the report’s authors explained its findings, the importance of the social determinants of health and well-being to its prospects for success, and how its content is relevant to the U.S. as it considers next steps for the ACA, and perhaps life without it. Our third presenter applied the learnings from Canada to the current US health and hospital environment, with insights regarding the implications for improving efficacy and efficiency.

Presenters:

• PG Forest, Ph.D., Professor and Director, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary
• Daniel Dutton, Ph.D., School of Public Policy, University of Calgary
• Norma Padron, MD, Senior Director, Applied Research and Data Analytics, Health Research & Educational Trust, American Hospital Association (AHA)

Responder: Margo Edmunds, Ph.D., Vice President, Evidence Generation and Translation, AcademyHealth; Co-PI, NIC

Moderator: Daniel Stein, President, Stewards of Change Institute; Co-PI, NIC

The webinar was followed by Q&A and discussion on the NIC Collaboration and Communication Hub. For those who wish to access webinar audio and other resources – and participate in related discussions on our NIC Collaboration Hub – please take the following steps:

1. Register to participate on the NIC Collaboration and Communication Hub.
2. Once your Hub membership is approved, hit the “Join us!” button in the Social Determinants of Health Group.
3. After the webinar, continue using the Group to connect with peers and keep the discussion going about the Social Determinants.
4. On social media, spread the word about your participation in the webinar, using the hashtag #SDwebinar18.

About the NIC Deeper Dive Webinar Series:

We’ve designed these presentations to go beyond the traditional webinar format in order to expand the opportunity for ongoing learning and facilitate networking with others interested in the topic of the event. There are two unique aspects to our “Deeper Dive” webinar-plus series, using the new Collaboration and Communication Hub.

• Before each webinar, we’ll publish a blog that includes key discussion points relating to the subject being examined. Readers will be invited to go to the NIC Hubto ask questions, offer insights and engage in discussions that extend the learning from the blog and inform the webinar’s content.
• Q&A will begin on the webinar platform after presentations, but the learning won’t end there. Rather, attendees can continue interacting with our expert presenters – and to engage in an ongoing conversation with other attendees/colleagues – by jumping to the NIC Hub.

Our webinar-plus series takes a different approach because it aims for a different outcome. It is designed to be an integral part of an ongoing, action-oriented agenda to advance interoperability and data-sharing. The objective of all of NIC’s work is to provide the information, tools and other resources needed to improve systems and increase collaboration among the multiple domains that impact health and well-being. Learn more about the primary domains in which NIC works.

If you have any questions or comments, write to nic@stewardsofchange.org.

The National Interoperability Collaborative’s first major event – A Symposium in the NIC of Time: Advancing Information-Sharing in California and Beyond – took place at the West Sacramento Civic Center on March 26-27, 2018. The invitation-only symposium was underwritten by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and was sponsored by NIC’s leadership team, Stewards of Change Institute and AcademyHealth, in partnership with the California Health and Human Services Agency and the Silicon Valley Regional Data Trust (SVRDT).

The 140 attendees heard about pioneering interoperability efforts across California, where NIC is building its initial statewide collaborative network, and in our other partner states (Connecticut and Virginia). Among the highlights of the event was an ambitious multi-county, multi-domain information-sharing project currently being conducted by SVRDT, as well as innovative initiatives in San Diego, San Francisco and other project sites.

Symposium participants were also connected to key programmatic and thought leaders from across the country – and learned about leading-edge activities, concepts, tools, and best practices – from across the six domains in which NIC primarily works to improve health and well-being by enhancing/advancing efficiency, interoperability goals, and most importantly, outcomes. Those six domains are: human and social services, public health, public education, public safety, emergency medical services, and health information technology.

Please click the images below to access the symposium agenda and the full-scale versions of the 24-foot graphic murals captured at the event. In the Session Matrix below, you’ll find  videos of the main sessions, excerpted graphic murals, PowerPoint presentations, documents distributed to attendees, output from interactive activities at the event, and other relevant materials. 

One of NIC’s distinguishing characteristics is its focus on cross-sector collaboration and learning across the six domains. Lessons learned in one area too often aren’t shared with any others, so organizations are forced to reinvent repeatedly or, worse, to make the same mistakes. Solving 21st century problems requires a multidisciplinary approach to incorporate all the factors that impact health, safety, and well-being. While valuable learning and networking around these issues occurred at the symposium, NIC also plans to synthesize the event’s output and publish a e-magazine soon, which we will disseminate broadly across the U.S.

We are very grateful to the organizations that have enabled NIC to make so much progress, so quickly: Kresge Foundation for providing the generous grant with which we are developing NIC; the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for underwriting our California symposium; our other sponsors – IBM, Microsoft, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation – for their additional support; and the California Health and Human Services Agency for partnering with NIC and SVRDT in sponsoring the event. Most importantly, we thank everyone working with us to build NIC’s California “chapter” – and nationally.