ABSTRACT
Public health assessment and surveillance require programs to seamlessly collaborate and work together, not only on emergency issues, but also on daily issues such as chronic disease prevention and health risk reduction. The erosion of the collaboration tradition of public health programs has caused major concerns in information sharing and interprogram disease surveillance and prevention. This chapter reviews some of the efforts at the national and state levels and then summarizes data integration efforts in Nebraska. The infrastructure approach to data enhancement is to encourage public health practitioners and researchers to use the data. The infrastructure enhancement approach fits well with health disparity assessment projects. Most states in the United States have a minority health or health disparity program. The infrastructure enhancement approach to data integration should be sustainable without outside funding. Finally, the chapter also provides an outline of the book.
