About the Public Health IT Catalog

The Public Health Toolbox is a result of the efforts of the Turning Point Initiative which is a national process "to transform and strengthen the public health system in the United States to make the system more effective, more community based, and more collaborative."  Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson and the W.K. Kellogg Foundations, Turning Point works from the basis of partnerships made on the national, state, and local levels.

The National Turning Point Collaborative on Information Technology (InfoTech Collaborative) aims to improve the health of the United States population through capacity building in the area of public health information systems.  Advances in the public health information infrastructure will enable improved public health assessment, decision-making, and policy development.

The InfoTech Collaborative recognizes that a useful first step in this process is to inventory and make available to the public health community an online, web-based catalog of existing public health information systems and related data initiatives.  This Public Health Information Systems Catalog web site constitutes an important step in the development of a national public health information infrastructure. 

The Public Health Information Systems Catalog web site provides an easy-to-use interface to a database of the current information systems initiatives at public health departments at the local, state, and federal levels throughout the nation.

Users of the site can browse or search the site by characteristics of the specific health problem of concern and/or the demographic characteristics the community of interest and receive in return data on the information systems utilized by similar communities throughout the United States to address the same or similar health problems.

The initial data to populate the web site database comes from a survey, developed and implemented by the InfoTech Collaborative, of the information systems in use at state and local public health entities throughout the United States.