Community of Practice Updates

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Policy for Federal Access to NSSP Data

During the November 2022 CoP Monthly meeting, Acting NSSP Lead Karl Soetebier informed the community of efforts to make NSSP data more accessible and to improve collaboration toward common goals.

In early December 2022, Soetebier updated site administrators of NSSP’s ongoing work related to data use. He explained how expanded access to NSSP data during the COVID-19 public health emergency enabled innovation in areas such as trend indicators and classification, anomaly detection, and text mining by age and geography. The ability to work this way routinely, outside the context of a public health emergency, is not permitted by the current data use agreement.

In early 2023, to build on public health response innovations and to continue to enhance data use, CDC has been working on designing a new NSSP agreement that will incorporate lessons learned from the COVID-19 response, enable close collaboration between sites and CDC, enable new innovations and services for sites, maximize responsible use of data and provide timelier synthesis of findings and recommendations, and help respond to the top concerns raised by public health departments in the Review of Federal Access to National Syndromic Surveillance Program Data: Findings and Implementation Strategies.

CDC has made a thoughtful choice to change from a data use agreement (DUA) to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to better reflect the collaborative nature of the agreement. By refocusing the DUA as an MOU, the collaborative and participatory goals of the partnership across federal, state, and local public health authorities become more transparent.

To inform community members throughout this process, we will make a new Policy for Federal Access to NSSP Data web page available in spring 2023. It will contain information on the development and long-term benefits we hope to achieve, so stay tuned!

Making the Right Data Available to Inform Decision-Making

In February 2023, The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) posted the Review of Federal Access to National Syndromic Surveillance Program Data: Findings and Implementation Strategies.

CSTE collaborated with CDC and Texas A&M University School of Public Health to develop this report. They brought together epidemiologists in leadership positions or with decision-making power who represented state, tribal, local or territorial (STLT) public health departments to identify considerations and implementation strategies for permitting federal access to NSSP data.​

For additional context and details about the process and findings, listen to author/contractor Cason Schmit’s presentation for the October 2022 NSSP CoP monthly call. Please direct questions about the report to syndromic@cste.org.

NSSP CoP Monthly Meeting

The National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) Community of Practice (CoP) met on March 22, 2023. Attendance has grown! We’re averaging 213 participants on the monthly meetings. Recordings for CoP monthly calls are posted in the Knowledge Repository.

Call Recording

The March 22, 2023, meeting recording has been posted. The agenda follows:

Welcome/Introduction of New NSSP CoP Core Committee Deputy Chair Gabriel Ann Haas: Anna Frick (AK)
CSTE Announcements: James Muncy (CSTE), Becky Lampkins (CSTE)
NSSP Updates: Karl Soetebier (CDC NSSP)
Update “NSSP Mortality Data: What’s Going On?”: Edward Lockhart (CDC), Richard Raines (AK)
Demo “Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Dashboard”: Elizabeth Swedo (CDC), Kayla Anderson (CDC)
Site-level Respiratory Dashboard Demo: Michael Sheppard (CDC)

NSSP Update