NACCHO+(Nation+Association+of+County+and+City+Health+Officials)


 * Term:** NACCHO


 * Description:** National Association of County and City Health Officials is an organization founded in the 1960s, it is now placing emphasis on informatics in order to better health care. They are working at the local level, representing over 2850 local departments. Although the organization has a large scope, they are pushing for increased health IT systems.

NACCHO emphasizes communications over the areas it covers. Their main goal is to establish a strong base for epidemiology to logically approach disease instead of dealing with it case-by-case. One of the ways they are utilizing health IT to accomplish this is by utilizing GIS.


 * Applications:** NACCHO is currently working with ESRI, a leading GIS company, to view local HIT trends and capacity. They are working together to create educational tools to highlight the need for GIS in health IT.

GIS has many applications for NACCHO to better their local areas. Monitoring GIS can stop outbreaks, show where areas where a disease is in (perhaps find a reason why), and promote immunizations. It also is important to show the best places to establish health care facilities relative to population. NACCHO hopes to take all this data and improve the health care of the areas they represent. By better understanding the problems their area is facing, officials will be able to respond faster and predict the need for health care, hopefully vastly improving local governments ability to provide health care before situations become an emergency.


 * Web Resources:**

http://www.esri.com [|http://www.naccho.org] http://www.naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/informatics/glossary.cfm http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0499/umbrella.html


 * Related Terminology:**

ESRI: a GIS company GIS: Geographic information systems NACCHO: National Association of County and City Health Officials


 * Graphics:**