Purpose

The Office of Health Information and Policy leads the health assessment component of the Georgia Division of Public Health. The major purpose of OHIP is to provide valid and reliable evidence about the health status of the population of Georgia. The evidence of health status and other health related phenomena provided by OHIP is used to direct the Division’s policies and actions. OHIP defines policies and methods for creating analytical health information, and will maintain a single, standard information repository to support health assessment models and decisions, interventions and policies made by the Division. OHIP’s internal operations include:

• Information quality;
• Health statistics;
• Epidemiological modeling and information mining;
• Geographic Information Systems and spatial analysis;
• Intelligent information systems that include evidence-based business rules and forecasting health events.
• Web based distribution of health statistics and forecasting models.

OHIP uses a health field model as its primary method for assessment and forecasting. The health field model:

• Represents the interaction of biology, environment, lifestyle and health system effects and capacities as the major determinants of health;
• Allows for multiple or multidimensional configurations of these fields, since no one individual field may accurately represent or model all communities or the entire population;
• Allows health status to be predicted based on the interactions of the four fields, so as to guide policy, actions and resource allocations
• Health status is not perceived as a “problem” or based upon disease, illness or injury.

Functions:

• Assure valid and reliable health information.
• Stewardship of divisional information requirements, standards, and policies.
• Determine relevant, valid and reliable population health indicators.
• Distribute relevant health assessment information products which will be used to direct Divisional policy.
• Create and maintain a single standard repository of divisional information.