Project Overview

The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) is a nationwide collaboration that enables all levels of public health (local, state, territorial, federal, and international) to share health information required to monitor, control, and prevent the occurrence and spread of state-reportable and nationally notifiable infectious and some noninfectious diseases and conditions.

NNDSS is a multifaceted program that includes the surveillance system for collection, analysis, and sharing of health data and also policies, laws, electronic messaging standards, people, partners, information systems, processes, and resources at the local, state, and national levels.

Many state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments; CDC; and partner organizations, such as the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, use facets of NNDSS to

• collect, manage, share, analyze, interpret, and disseminate health-related data for state-reportable and nationally notifiable diseases and conditions;

• develop and maintain national standards—such as consistent case definitions and electronic messaging standards;

• monitor regional and national trends in diseases and health conditions;

• work with other jurisdictions and partners to implement and assess prevention and control programs;

• designate certain diseases and conditions as nationally notifiable;

• submit data on nationally notifiable diseases to CDC; and

• maintain and publish the official national notifiable diseases statistics from 57 state, territorial, and local reporting jurisdictions in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

CDC Project sponsor and lead: Michele Hoover; mlh5@cdc.gov

APHL Project sponsor and lead: Vanessa Holley; vanessa.holley@aphl.org

APHL Project manager: Heather Houston; hhouston@tsjg.com

High-Level Scope

• Accelerate Standardization and Development of Message Mapping Guides

  • Through collaboration and commitment from subject matter experts across multiple CDC national centers and involvement of jurisdiction partners and other key interested parties, CDC will accelerate the development and adoption of new-generation Message Mapping Guides (MMGs) for NNDSS case notifications.

  • With these guides, CDC will migrate from legacy messaging structures to the widely adopted HL7 standards that provide content standardization and interoperable message exchange structures. In addition to providing core data elements and data exchange formats, these new MMGs will satisfy CDC program requests for disease-specific variables for notifiable conditions.

• Develop the CDC Platform to Support the Electronic Exchange of Surveillance Data 

  • CDC will replace the existing NNDSS messaging infrastructure with a state-of-the art standardized data and software platform, which facilitates the receipt and distribution of notifiable disease data. The CDCP will implement MMGs and data exchange services and will result in more comprehensive, more accurate, and timelier information than ever before provided to CDC programs.

• Provide Technical Assistance and Support for Program Implementation

  • CDC partners with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) to provide technical assistance to certain state and local jurisdictions. Through this technical assistance, CDC and its partners will help jurisdictions adopt the MMGs and use them to send test case notification messages to the CDCP to ensure that these messages will be properly received, processed, and stored for analysis through this new platform.

Items in scope:

• Project management and business analysis: Identify needed resources, risks, and dependencies for electronic messaging.

• Data standards expertise and workflow analysis: Work closely with PHA surveillance and IT staff to harmonize surveillance system terminology to incorporate data standards.

• Technical architecture expertise: Develop and implement technical solutions that address data exchange needs.

Case Surveillance Modernization

To enhance case surveillance and reduce burden on state, local, and territorial jurisdictions participating in the NNDSS, CDC is implementing priority, near-term recommendations from a case surveillance discovery sprint led by a joint team from the United States Digital Service and CDC.

With the full support of the CDC Director, this effort supports the vision outlined in CDC Moving Forward and CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative (DMI).

CDC’s Case Surveillance Modernization website.

Timeline

Timeline is tracked in Smartsheet for each Cohort.

Interested Parties

• CDC DSAT Team

• Jurisdictions

• CDC Programs