A ride in the time machine: information management capabilities health departments will need.

We have proposed needed information management capabilities for future US health departments predicated on trends in health care reform and health information technology. Regardless of whether health departments provide direct clinical services (and many will), they will manage unprecedented quantities of sensitive information for the public health core functions of assurance and assessment, including population-level health surveillance and metrics. Absent improved capabilities, health departments risk vestigial status, with consequences for vulnerable populations.

Decision science: a scientific approach to enhance public health budgeting.

The allocation of resources for public health programming is a complicated and daunting responsibility. Financial decision-making processes within public health agencies are especially difficult when not supported with techniques for prioritizing and ranking alternatives. This article presents a case study of a decision analysis software model that was applied to the process of identifying funding priorities for public health services in the Spokane Regional Health District.