At a February 5-8 meeting in Bogotá, the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) convened with global health leaders from 5 countries to inform the adaptation of the Informatics and Data Science for Health (IDASH) training program to South American contexts.
IDASH–part of I-TECH’s Integrated Next-generation Surveillance in Global Health: Translation to Action (INSIGHT) project–is a training program for current and future leaders in public health that aims to strengthen regional capacity to use public health information and data systems to improve health outcomes at the population level, detect and respond effectively to threats to public health, and promote health equity.
The objectives of the intensive, weeklong Executive Committee meeting included identifying priorities and key capabilities; adapting the structure of the IDASH course to local needs as well as government priorities and initiatives; and identifying government and academic resources to support teaching.
IDASH South America Director Fernanda Freistadt addresses the participants on Day 1 of the meeting. Photo courtesy of Maíra Pessoa/FVS-RCP.
In a a website post of IDASH partner Fundação de Vigilância em Saúde do Amazonas – Dra. Rosemary Costa Pinto, INSIGHT Regional Director for South America Fernanda Freistadt said: “This initiative has the potential to create health professionals who have advanced knowledge in both epidemiology and information technology, an area in which there is a great lack today. Furthermore, IDASH can strengthen technical relations and collaborations in the area of surveillance between countries.”
The Executive Committee Meeting included representatives from Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, and Ecuador, as well as international partners including Georgia’s National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (which has been an important partner in the IDASH training program for Eastern Europe/Central Asia). It is anticipated that the South America expansion implementation to happen later this year.
IDASH fellows engage in group work during an October workshop in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Photo credit: Jamey Gentry/CDC.
Last month, the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH), in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and with support from the World Health Organization (WHO), facilitated the second of three in-person workshops for the Informatics and Data Science for Health (IDASH) fellowship.
Held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the workshop marked the mid-point of the 12-month fellowship—and a chance for participants to come together to advance their ability to apply public health informatics and data science concepts and approaches.
“This workshop included a lot of hands-on practical exercises, and it was fun to observe how engaged the participants were with these activities and with the learning in general,” said Stacey Lissit, MPH, MS, Senior Technical Advisor for the IDASH program.
Content included all things data (quality, cleaning, analysis, visualization, governance, security, privacy, and confidentiality); interoperability; project management; business process analysis; and systems architecture. Sessions were a mix of didactic lecture, small group activities to practice application of skills and concepts, peer feedback, and guided hands-on learning in R and PowerBI. Over the course of the two weeks, participants collaborated to develop a data dashboard, a database schema, and a data quality workplan.
The first cohort of the IDASH fellowship, with I-TECH instructors. Photo credit: Jamey Gentry/CDC.
The current fellowship, launched in April 2023, comprises a cohort of four participants each from Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan—a total of 20 fellows. Each four-person team includes a mix of mid-senior level epidemiologists, informaticians, data scientists, IT, and public health policy personnel.
Fellow Zhanibek Yerubayev, Director of Public Health Emergency Operations at the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health’s National Center of Public Health, says the team mix is an integral part of IDASH’s impact. “[IDASH] connects people from the public health side with people from the IT side,” he says. “These people have a lot of projects to do [together], but they are not always well connected, and they do not always understand each other well.”
“It was exciting to see the relationships and community that are being built through the IDASH Fellowship – both within the country teams where fellows can collaborate closely with colleagues outside of their typical ‘work silos,’ and across countries within the region,” said Lissit. “That peer learning element is such an important part of the fellowship.”
And all efforts were made to ensure multi-directional collaboration. The Ukrainian team did not receive permission to travel to the workshop, so I-TECH made arrangements for them to participate via Zoom. A location was identified in southwest Ukraine where the team could attend the workshop together remotely, experience fewer daily safety issues related to the war, and avoid the distractions of being in their own workplace. A simultaneous translator for the Ukrainian language was provided on the Zoom call.
While remote participation is not ideal, the Ukraine team was able to attend and hear most of the workshop sessions and engage in the group work in meaningful ways. “A lot of effort went into setting up the technology that enabled this participation,” said Lissit. “At one point the Ukraine team was participating in a peer feedback activity with two country teams in Almaty—there were live cameramen, screen sharing, Zoom translators…and it worked mostly seamlessly!”
Fellow Durbek Aliyev, Deputy CEO at IT-Med LLC, which works under the Uzbekistan Ministry of Health, was especially appreciative of the chance to learn from a wide range experts across the region. “The digitalization of health care cannot be done by only one country itself,” said Aliyev. “The advantage of IDASH over other programs is that it brings [together] specialists from neighbor countries. We are talking to each other….We are learning from each other directly.”
And these relationships will be a lasting benefit of the program, he continued. “IDASH is a place where we can establish very good networking with other countries,” said Aliyev. “Any time I can contact them and learn from their expertise.”
IDASH is a project within the Integrated Next-Generation Surveillance in Global Health: Translation to Action (INSIGHT) program. In addition to acquiring new skills and knowledge in public health informatics and data science, IDASH country teams are developing and will implement a collaborative team project that demonstrates key competencies and is aligned with their country’s needs and priorities.
Participants gather for group discussion during the first IDASH in-person workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia. Photo credit: CDC/EECA
On April 3, the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) launched the Informatics and Data Science for Health (IDASH) fellowship training program with an in-person workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia. The program launched in partnership with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CDC/EECA) Regional Office, the World Health Organization (WHO) Europe, and country governments.
The first IDASH cohort includes 20 fellows from Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Participants include mid- to senior-level technical, analytical, and public health staff working at the national level in public health informatics or data science.
“After several whirlwind months of collaboration and engagement with stakeholders from the five countries, it’s amazing to welcome the first cohort of IDASH to Tbilisi for the first of three in-person workshops,” said Stacey Lissit, MPH, MS, Senior Technical Advisor for the IDASH program.
Fellows will participate in a 12-month in-service training program, in which each country team of four fellows will identify and develop a collaborative project. Fellows will receive sustained mentorship, and regional communities of practice will be established to ensure regional collaboration, share lessons learned and best practices, and establish linkages for future programming needs that span multiple countries.
“IDASH provides the opportunity to link learning to experience, and enables the application of new public health skills, knowledge, and techniques acquired from the training in a real-life context,” said Peter Rabinowitz, MD, MPH, Principal Investigator for the IDASH project. “It also extends benefits beyond the trainees to partner agencies and organizations, helping strengthen public health capacity in the region.”
Proposed fellowship projects include automating data analysis and visualization for diseases, expanding digital immunization registries beyond COVID-19, and developing spatial analysis modules for multi-disease surveillance and response.
“Today, the afternoon of the 4th day, the room is buzzing as the five country teams are hard at work: two engrossed in consultation with our facilitation team of public health informatics and data science experts about their country team projects; the others working on a data science methods exercise, practicing interpretation of descriptive and inferential statistics plots to assess trends in Hepatitis C,” said Ms. Lissit. “The energy and engagement have been high, and we’re looking forward to the next six days and the rest of the year-long fellowship.”
IDASH goals are to enhance capacity to create and use public health information systems that enable the capture, management, analysis, dissemination, and use of reliable, timely information to improve population-level health outcomes, as well as strengthen regional capacity to effectively respond to future global health challenges and pandemics.
“The COVID-19 pandemic made clear the importance of public health data systems that provide real time, accurate data on disease threats to allow for timely intervention and combatting of mis- and disinformation,” said Dr. Rabinowitz. “Programs like IDASH will help ensure there is a workforce prepared to detect, prevent, and respond to future global health threats.”
