Message from the President - Molly Crawford
Congratulations to our 2019 Award Winners! NAPHSIS is a strong association that relies on its values and members. The NAPHSIS Triumph awards are one way that we recognize the exceptional efforts and achievements of our peers. At our Annual Meeting in Columbus, OH earlier this month, five individuals and two multi-jurisdictional groups were recognized for their great work and applauded at the awards breakfast. We know the value of vital records and health statistics and the importance of our work. Our commitment to public health, protecting individual identities, and serving our customers shows every day. I want to personally congratulate all of the 2019 award winners for their contributions and thank those of you who nominated them and the other award candidates! We hope to feature some of the work in future NAPHSIS newsletters and VSCP calls. I encourage all jurisdictions to customize and share the NAPHSIS press release with your local media, your health department leadership, and those in your vital records and health statistics community. Simply click on the link below, edit the contact information to your name and email and send to the media of your choice. Information about each award and more pictures are available on the NAPHSIS website.
PRESS RELEASE - 2019 Award Winners
Comet Award Devon Priddle, Data Administration Manager, Ohio Constellation Awards (2 Awards) 2018-2019 NAPHSIS Registration CommitteeMulti-Jurisdictional Delayed Birth Registration Project – Joint Award to the Vital Records Offices of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Partner of the Year Elena Bakker, QuantumMark Rising Star Award Terra Abrams, State Registrar, District of Columbia Shining Star Award Mary Huynh, Director Office of Vital Statistics, New York City Halbert L. Dunn Award Delton Atkinson, NCHS, NAPHSIS, and NC (Retired)
Executive Director Report - Shawna Webster Thank You for Supporting the 2019 Annual Meeting! My sincere thanks to the three hundred members, federal partners, and corporate partners who gathered in Columbus over June 3rd - 6th to make our 2019 annual meeting a resounding success. This year's meeting included more compelling evidence of the growing importance of vital records and why our association needs to stand at the forefront of the national effort to improve public health and protect personal identity. A very special thank you to President Molly Crawford (MN) and her Program Committee for assembling a terrific roster of speakers from inside and outside the NAPHSIS membership. The week’s program included many important topics for our attendees to absorb, and I know that everyone who attended the meeting appreciated their time spent learning, sharing, and re-connecting with their colleagues. I’d like to extend our appreciation to Karen Sorrell and her staff from the Ohio Department of Health for hosting us in their hometown – Columbus was a perfect place for our community to gather. And we also owe a great big thank you to our Platinum, Gold, and Silver Corporate Partners who made the many networking opportunities and social events possible throughout the meeting, in addition to supporting our organization’s mission throughout the rest of the year. We're already looking forward to the 2020 Annual Meeting in Omaha on June 1st – 4th. See you there!
2019 Meeting Presentations Available on Members Only Site
We have gathered copies of presentations from many of this year's annual meeting speakers and made them available through the Members Only site (login required). With very few exceptions, the speakers provided their slides to NAPHSIS with permission to share them with the vital records offices and PDF versions of those slides can be found in the Resource Center. Simply click on 'Annual Meeting Presentations' under the Search field to see a list of presentations showing each speaker name and title. Copies of the presentation files are provided for reference of anyone in your vital records and vital statistics offices! For those of you who attended the meeting, we ask that you point your colleagues to some of the most useful and informative presentations you saw during your time in Columbus. Just one example of a presentation that should garner attention is the Innovations presentation delivered by Heather Strosnider with the CDC's Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice. Heather's presentation "Disseminating environmental health surveillance data using standardized sub county geographies" is a great overview of the Environmental Public Health Tracking Program and its efforts to better understand environmental hazards and impacts at the sub-county level. Anyone in the jurisdictions who works on geo-coding, population estimates, or USALEEP would benefit from reviewing these slides and learning about CDC's challenges and successes in this area. This presentation is just one example from the almost 50 files now available on the website, and we hope you find them useful in retaining and sharing what you learned while attending this year’s meeting.
We Want You to Like Us...
Are you following NAPHSIS on Facebook and Twitter?
Active involvement in social media can play an important role in the success of our association. The social media platforms can improve our ability to engage with our members and partners. This engagement is needed to further our NAPHSIS mission and vision. Social media helps build our community and cultivates peer-to-peer communication. It also demonstrates our understanding and expertise in the vital records and statistics arena. We need your help to enhance our social media presence. Please take the time to click on the links at the right to direct you to our social media pages and like us on Facebook and Twitter!
Headshots from the Annual Meeting are now available
I hope all of you took advantage of the opportunity to have a professional headshot taken while at the annual meeting. You can find your photos at this link. Instructions: Search using both first AND last name with a space in between names
More Information on Upcoming NAPHSIS Events
VSCP Call on July 10 NAPHSIS, in collaboration with NCHS, is hosting a Field Services and Data Quality Workshop in Denver, Colorado on August 13th through 15th. This workshop is intended for field services staff and statistical staff involved in identifying data quality issues and conducting quality queries of birth, death and fetal death events. Participants will learn about NCHS data quality reports and eLearning demos, techniques for engaging with data providers, and tips from fellow jurisdictions on identifying issues and improving data quality. Click here to see the At-A-Glance Meeting Agenda. Online registration, hotel information, and a detailed agenda will be released in the next few weeks. The 2019 Identity & Security Conference is the only event that covers the intersection of identity, security, and vital records. The 2019 conference will take place at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, DC on November 4th and 5th. Registration will open on July 1st and details on the learning, networking, and training opportunities available to participants will be released soon. The latest information can always be found on the Identity & Security Conference webpage. New for this year, NAPHSIS will be holding Systems & Interoperability Workshops, first in Baltimore, Maryland in October and then in Phoeniz, Arizona in December. These workshops will cover topics related to vital records systems, interoperability, and data sharing policies. Participating vital records staff can expect to see system demos, hear lessons learned from other jurisdictions, and connect with system vendors and other vital records data partners. More detailed information will be available in the near future! Please begin making your plans to attend all of the upcoming NAPHSIS events related to your work! As always, you can keep up with the latest information on our Events page.
Jurisdictional Database Updates
Our Jurisdictional Database is a valuable tool for NAPHSIS members, staff and partners to get a quick understanding of the vital records landscape. We are adding new data points, as well as asking for updates to existing information collected. Please review the current information for your jurisdiction by accessing the state profile tab and selecting your jurisdiction. There will be a survey released tomorrow, Tuesday, June 25, to the primary contact for each jurisdiction. The updates will be done in phases instead of all at once, to help ease the burden of sitting down and gathering answers. We ask for your response for the first phase of questions to be submitted by July 15. If you have any questions about the updates or completing the survey, please contact HQ@naphsis.org.
Jurisdiction Member Spotlight
A new feature to the monthly newsletter is the jurisdiction member spotlight. We want to share information about our members. If you have any news or important information that you would like to see in the monthly newsletter related to things happening in your jurisdiction, please email NAPHSIS staff. Maryland’s current State Registrar, Geneva Sparks, will be retiring this month. Therefore, effective Wednesday, June 19th, Crystal Weaver will be appointed as the next State Registrar. We thank Ms. Sparks for her long service to the state of Maryland, and welcome Ms. Weaver to this new position.