A Public Health Specialist says he is confident that a three-day workshop targeting health care providers island-wide, in analyzing data, will provide the necessary information to modify their practice.
Public Health Specialist in the Health Information Unit, Dave Laudat, told DNO that normally data would be collected and sent to Central level for analysis.
But the workshop aims to change that.
“We are shifting from the culture of just data collection and reporting,” he said. “We want persons to develop competencies in analyzing their data. Whilst persons will gather the data that will give you the evidence later, we want our health care providers to be able to analyze the data for themselves, and to get the evidence staring at them, to inform them how they can modify and improve their practice to make health care better at the community level.”
Laudat noted that when practioners use the data for their own clinical practices, they become stakeholders and stir an interest when collecting it. This, he said, becomes useful for securing funds for health.
He said presently the Ministry of Health is in a cooperative agreement with the US Center for Disease control and Prevention which is funding the three-year project which deals with strategic information and Lab strengthening.
“What we are really trying to do is to improve disease surveillance,” Laudat said. “Whilst the project is specific to HIV, the concept goes across the board to all health issues. Improving surveillance means collecting data, getting the needed information so that you can now pool it together, analyze it and let the data now speak to you to give you the information that is needed for improved practice.”
He said the participants in the workshop were chosen based on their interest and eagerness to learn.
At the end participants will be expected to: learn how to develop a data collection tool into Epi Infor (an analytical tool used by health providers to analyze health related data) and to secondly, analyse that data.
good they need dat!