Journal:Codesign of the Population Health Information Management System to measure reach and practice change of childhood obesity programs

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Full article title Codesign of the Population Health Information Management System to measure reach and practice change of childhood obesity programs
Journal Public Health Research & Practice
Author(s) Green, Amanda M.; Innes-Hughes, Christine; Rissel, Chris; Mitchell, Jo; Milat, Andrew J.;
Williams, Mandy; Persson, Lina; Thackway, Sarah; Lewis, Nicola; Wiggers, John
Author affiliation(s) NSW Ministry of Health, University of Sydney, South Western Sydney Local Health District,
Hunter New England Local Health District, University of Newcastle
Primary contact Email: Amanda dot Green at health dot nsw dot gov dot au
Year published 2018
Volume and issue 28(3)
Page(s) e2831822
DOI 10.17061/phrp2831822
ISSN 2204-2091
Distribution license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Website http://www.phrp.com.au/issues/september-2018-volume-28-issue-3/
Download http://www.phrp.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PHRP2831822.pdf (PDF)

Abstract

Introduction: Childhood obesity prevalence is an issue of international public health concern, and governments have a significant role to play in its reduction. The Healthy Children Initiative (HCI) has been delivered in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, since 2011 to support implementation of childhood obesity prevention programs at scale. Consequently, a system to support local implementation and data collection, analysis, and reporting at local and state levels was necessary. The Population Health Information Management System (PHIMS) was developed to meet this need.

Design and development: A collaborative and iterative process was applied to the design and development of the system. The process comprised identifying technical requirements, building system infrastructure, delivering training, deploying the system, and implementing quality measures.

Use of PHIMS: Implementation of PHIMS resulted in rapid data retrieval and reporting against agreed performance measures for the HCI. The system has 150 users who account for the monitoring and reporting of more than 6000 HCI intervention sites (early childhood services and primary schools).

Lessons learned: Developing and implementing PHIMS presented a number of complexities including: applying an information technology (IT) development methodology to a traditional health promotion setting; data access and confidentiality issues; and managing system development and deployment to intended timelines and budget. PHIMS was successfully codesigned as a flexible, scalable, and sustainable IT solution that supports state-wide HCI program implementation, monitoring, and reporting.

Introduction

Childhood overweight and obesity is of international public health concern, and governments have a significant role to play in addressing the issue.[1] In New South Wales (NSW), Australia, the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity remains high, at 21 percent.[2]

From 2011 to 2014, the Australian Government implemented the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health, which provided a historic increase in funding to prevent chronic disease. In NSW, this coordinated prevention effort for children was delivered through the Healthy Children Initiative (HCI) by the NSW Ministry of Health (the Ministry). The HCI involves the implementation of primary and secondary obesity prevention programs across the state in settings attended by children, for example, early childhood services and primary schools.[3]

A well-established health promotion workforce existed in NSW that had designed and implemented programs in these settings and had the potential to achieve state-wide population-level reach and outcomes. However, a significant scaling up of delivery and monitoring of these programs was required to effect population-level change. To facilitate this, enhanced funding was provided to all 15 NSW Government Local Health District (LHD) health promotion services to support local implementation of these programs.[4]

Two programs—Munch & Move and Live Life Well @ School (LLW@S)—were identified from pilot programs to be delivered at scale across NSW as part of the HCI. Munch & Move had a potential reach of more than 3,500 center-based early childhood services and more than 190,000 children aged 0–5 years. LLW@S had a potential reach of more than 2,400 primary schools with more than 675,000 students.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the contributions of Liz King, Neil Orr, Louise Farrell, Bev Lloyd, Andy Bravo, Masela Draper, Deni Fukunishi, Andy Lui, Rita Lagaluga, Evan Freeman, Elena Ouspenskaia, Claudine Lyons, Kym Buffett, Rhonda Matthews, Project Advisory Board Members, Steering Committee Members, Transition Group and Reference Group Members and the Directors and staff of Local Health District Health Promotion Services across NSW.

This paper was developed as part of a program of research on monitoring health promotion practice within The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre. It was funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council Partnership Centre Grants Scheme (ID GNT 9100001) with the Australian Government Department of Health, the NSW Ministry of Health, ACT Health and the HCF Research Foundation.

Author contributions

AG and CI-H drafted the manuscript. CR, JM, AM, MW, LP, ST, NL and JW reviewed and contributed to editing the manuscript. All authors read, revised and approved the final manuscript. All authors contributed to the development and/or implementation of PHIMS.

Competing interests

None declared.

Peer review and provenance

Externally peer reviewed, commissioned.

References

Notes

This presentation is faithful to the original, with only a few minor changes to presentation, spelling, and grammar. We also added PMCID and DOI when they were missing from the original reference.