MENDS
Multi-state EHR-based Network for Disease Surveillance (MENDS) is a distributed network that leverages electronic health record (EHR) data to generate timely prevalence estimates of chronic disease measures at national and local levels.
About MENDS
In 2018, the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors funded by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, initiated the pilot of Multi-state EHR-based Network for Disease Surveillance (MENDS).
MENDS is a distributed network for surveillance that leverages electronic health record (EHR) data to generate timely prevalence estimates of chronic disease risk measures at national and local levels. MENDS can be accessed by health departments and other authorized users for monitoring trends, informing policies, planning programs, and evaluating outcomes to improve the health of the population.
MENDS has an implementation focus on six key areas:
- Governance
- Partnerships
- Technical infrastructure and support
- Chronic disease algorithms and validation
- Weighting and modeling
- Workforce education for public health data users
Project Resources
MENDS Partners
Groups guiding the MENDS project include:
Partner Sites
The MENDS project involves five pilot partner sites. These sites represent both data contributors and data users. Data contributors are healthcare organizations or data aggregators contributing data to MENDS. Data users are organizations within a partner site using MENDS data as surveillance, such as a State or Local Health Department. Partners piloting the MENDS project include:
MENDS Data Contributors
MENDS Data Users
- Chicago Department of Public Health
- Indiana Department of Health
- Cook County Department of Public Health
- Louisiana Office of Public Health
- Marion County Public Health Department
- New Orleans Health Department
- Texas Department of State Health Services
- University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
- Washington State Department of Health