Supporting National Data Modernization for Chronic Disease Surveillance
The Challenge
Chronic diseases represent 8 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States, yet surveillance systems for these conditions lag far behind infectious disease monitoring. Unlike infectious diseases with mandated reporting requirements and standardized data transmission pathways, chronic disease data remains fragmented across disconnected systems, often arriving years too late to inform timely interventions. State, local, Tribal, and territorial public health agencies face significant barriers to accessing clinical data, lack standardized processes for surveillance, and operate with limited resources to modernize aging infrastructure—all while health disparities continue to widen across communities.
Our Role
Over two years, Ross Strategic supported the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) in developing a comprehensive Strategic Plan and Roadmap for national chronic disease surveillance modernization. We facilitated collaboration among diverse stakeholders—including state, local, Tribal, and territorial public health jurisdictions, CDC, healthcare organizations, and community partners—to build consensus around modernization priorities. Our team conducted an extensive landscape analysis incorporating literature reviews, stakeholder assessments with nearly 250 respondents, and focused engagements with Tribal Epidemiology Centers and territorial partners to understand unique challenges and opportunities. This analysis informed the Strategic Plan’s vision, goals, and strategies across five key domains: people, data, process, technology, and policy. We then led multiple rounds of engagement with public health jurisdictions to translate strategic priorities into actionable implementation steps, resulting in a detailed Roadmap with specific objectives, actions, and success metrics. Ross Strategic also contributed to the development of an interactive dashboard designed to help users navigate and implement Roadmap elements tailored to their jurisdiction’s capacity and needs.
The Impact
The Strategic Plan and Roadmap now guide chronic disease surveillance modernization efforts across federal and STLT jurisdictions, providing a unified framework that addresses workforce development, data sharing policies, technology integration, and partnership building. By aligning chronic disease priorities with broader federal data modernization initiatives and articulating clear, capacity-appropriate pathways for implementation, this work enables public health agencies to more effectively monitor disease trends, identify disparities, and direct resources where they are most needed. The framework positions jurisdictions at varying starting points to advance modernization in ways that strengthen their capacity to protect community health and reduce the burden of chronic diseases.