IDPH Publishes Second Issue of Illinois Morbidity and Mortality Bulletin

SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today released the second issue of its Illinois Morbidity and Mortality Bulletin (IMMB). The IMMB is IDPH’s primary publication for scientific articles of interest to public health communities and professionals in Illinois. Articles in the IMMB are prepared by IDPH staff from various programs and provide analysis, description, interpretation, and discussion of data.

“We are very committed to planning and implementing programming that is data-driven,” said IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah, M.D., J.D. “One of our core functions is to be a clearinghouse for public health research and the IMMB is an example of how we accomplish that goal.”

This bulletin features two articles from staff in IDPH’s Office of Health Protection.

In the first article, IDPH Data Informatics Manager Judy Kauerauf and IDPH Surveillance and Informatics Epidemiologist Stacey Hoferka review IDPH's experience with and challenges surrounding meaningful use of clinical data for public health in Illinois.

In the second article, Dr. Frida Fokum of the Division of Environmental Health and Dr. Mohammed Shahidullah of the Illinois Center for Health Statistics collaborated with Emile Jorgensen of the Chicago Department of Public Health and Dr. Helen Binns of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Memorial Hospital of Chicago to analyze childhood blood lead data as reported to the Department over the period of 1996 to 2012.

The IMMB target audience is public health practitioners, researchers, physicians, nurses, epidemiologists, educators, staff at local health departments and policy makers.

The IMMB can be found at http://www.dph.illinois.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immb-vol1-issue2.pdf.