All levels of public health, from the local to the national level, struggle to obtain timely, accurate and actionable information. The CDC Foundation is committed to supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Data Modernization Initiative—a multi-year, billion-plus dollar effort to modernize core data and surveillance infrastructure across the federal and state public health landscape.

Through the Data Modernization Initiative Shared Services project, the CDC Foundation will ensure Federal investments in DMI and shared services mature to their full potential. CDCF will build on learning and successes of other CDC Foundation innovative standards-based and data systems improvement programs. These programs range from efforts to unlock electronic health records (EHRs) for public health needs to promoting use of 21st Century Cures Act data interoperability standards to strengthening birth and death registration in countries across the globe. Harnessing the momentum of interoperability standards and broad commitment to modernize the public health data infrastructure, shared services can connect people, process, and technology in powerful ways that transform how diverse – and often disconnected – data systems work more efficiently together. The result will be better health and better decision making in communities across the country.

Shared services models offer opportunities to achieve such access through scaled, core data functionality for use by and within communities. The desired future state for shared services requires agile development and real-world testing of solutions within a federated data system. 

The Data Modernization Initiative Shared Services project will work with public health agencies to develop an infrastructure that will make it easier to share data management and analysis tools across public health agencies, and for those agencies to integrate solutions into their existing systems. The goal is to move toward more modular information systems, in which effective tools are more easily shared among public health agencies, and in which the latest technology and innovations can be more easily integrated into existing systems. This initiative will support identification and development of specific tools, and development of an infrastructure or environment for supporting and propagating those tools, including standards, tool maintenance, training and support, and governance.

This web page is supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $4,819,814 with 100 percent funded by CDC/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.