Assignment Location: Minnesota Department of Health St. Paul, Minnesota Primary Mentor: Martin LaVenture, PhD, MPH, FACMI Director, Office of Health IT and e‐Health; State Government HIT Coordinator Minnesota Department of Health Secondary Mentor: Jennifer Fritz, MPH Deputy Director, Office of Health IT and e‐Health Minnesota Department of Health Mentor Information Dr. LaVenture is a leading expert in the field of public health informatics and has been a pioneer in establishing an informatics unit within a state health agency. He has been Director of the Center for Health Informatics since 1997, which is currently the Office of Health Information Technology (OHIT) and e‐Health. The OHIT provides: informatics support to many programs within the department; coordinates the MDH Meaningful Use program; supports the 10 year old Minnesota e‐Health Initiative and the corresponding legislatively chartered e‐Health Advisory Committee. The E‐Health Initiative received the 2014 State Government Innovation Award. (http://sgia.umn.edu/). Dr. LaVenture was the former Assistant State Epidemiologist for Wisconsin Division of Health and has authored numerous articles including: a seminal paper in the field of public health informatics in 2000; lead author for the chapter on public health informatics in the 4th edition of the Shortliffe & Cimino’s Textbook of Biomedical Informatics (BMI); lead author for the series of articles on creating and informatics savvy health department. He is an elected fellow to the American College of Medical Informatics and member of public health/e‐health informatics policy committee of ASTHO since 2004. 2. Supervisory Experience: Dr. LaVenture has over 30 years of experience managing public health programs most recently with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). He has directed small and large programs with staff from 10 to over 250. He currently directs the Office of Health IT and e‐Health. The OHIT programs include: the Minnesota e‐Health initiative; Standards and Interoperability; Health Information Exchange; Certification of and oversight of HIE vendors; meaningful use; informatics profile and evaluation and assessment; privacy and security program; informatics technical assistance and others. 3. Past Mentoring Experience: Dr. LaVenture has served as mentor, preceptor and advisor to graduate students, fellows, medical residents, health professionals, and others for some 30 years. Most recently he has served as mentor for I‐TIPP fellows and for graduate students from Nursing, Public Health and Health Informatics. 4. Academic Affiliations and Responsibilities: Dr. LaVenture holds Adjunct Faculty appointments at the University of Minnesota (UMN) Institute for Health Informatics (IHI), School of Nursing, and the School of Public Health. He is instrumental in the conceptualization and offering of the first public health informatics course offered for academic credit at
UMN. He is also involved in many public health informatics training and education efforts and regularly serves as a guest speaker for PHI seminars and courses. Jennifer Fritz is the Deputy Director from the Office of Health Information Technology at the Minnesota Department of Health. Jennifer is responsible for the direction of Minnesota e‐Health programs, including the Minnesota e‐Health Initiative, Minnesota’s Health Information Exchange Oversight Program, Minnesota’s State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement, and activities related to privacy and security, health informatics and data standards. Prior to serving as Deputy Director, Jennifer was a project manager on the state’s health information exchange activities with responsibilities for developing and implementing Minnesota’s strategic plan for health information exchange. Jennifer has also worked on a variety of public health informatics projects aiming to improve the development and use of public health information systems. 2. Supervisory Experience: Jennifer has been a supervisor in her current role for approximately 2 ½ years. In her current role, working collaboratively with the Director of the Office of Health Information Technology, Jennifer provides overall leadership and guidance on public health informatics issues and projects to staff both within the Office of Health Information Technology and in consultation capacity outside of the Office to other Minnesota Department of Health staff. 3. Past Mentoring Experience: Jennifer has informally, both as supervisor and peer colleague, served as a mentor to other fellows, particularly ones located within the Office of Health Information Technology. 4. Academic Affiliations and Responsibilities: Jennifer does not hold any formal academic affiliations or responsibilities. Assignment Description Minnesota’s public health system is known as one of the best in the nation. It is built upon a strong partnership between the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), local public health agencies, tribal governments and a range of other organizations. The department’s mission is to protect, maintain and improve the health of all Minnesotans. It has about 1,500 employees and an annual budget of approximately $500 million in state, federal and fee‐based funds. An agency overview can be found here: http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/opa/agencyoverview.pdf. The MDH Office of Health IT and e‐Health (OHIT) can offer the Fellow many opportunities to meet IPE objectives and a broad range of other significant learning opportunities and training experiences. MDH has extensive experience with projects, activities and programs that use a collaborative practice approach. Public health informatics by its nature is an interdisciplinary activity and education is a foundational tenet. The MDH OHIT Fellowship projects involve teams with staff from across public health disciplines both internal and external to MDH. The work is charter driven and based on informatics and information sciences practices and consistent with inter‐professional education (IPE) principles. Examples include training and mentoring in project leadership skills that are essential to building and sustaining teams, including the ability to identify a health team’s shared goal and define who is on the team; create and
use clear roles and responsibilities, and specific desired goals, roles and responsibilities are championed as well as an effective communications strategy. The Fellow will have many opportunities to be part of activities that strengthen partnerships and linkages among public health, health care systems, non‐public health governmental agencies, and community‐based organizations. One key example is that the Fellow will be part of the MN e‐Health Initiative, a 10‐year old effort that engages a diverse and statewide set of stakeholders to support e‐ health goals and is coordinated by OHIT. The Fellow will participate in the planning of the e‐Health Advisory Committee meetings. In addition the Fellow will participate in co‐supporting one of the Advisory Committee workgroups. The current workgroups are Health Information Exchange, Standards and Interoperability, and Privacy and Security. The fellow will also participate in several of the innovative programs underway at OHIT. In June 2014, OHIT celebrated the 10 year anniversary of partnerships and linkages with the health systems around the state. The e‐Health Initiative has produced multiple innovative efforts in using informatics to support community health most recently receiving a 2014 State Government Innovations award for the accomplishments. The Fellow will be encouraged to participate in two or more of these innovative initiatives. o State Innovation Model (SIM) is funded by CMS and designed to support development of innovative communities’ activities. o MDH Health Equity Initiative recognizes that e‐health is a tool to advance health equity and access to e‐health is a social determinant of health. o Community e‐Health Roadmaps project is a ground‐breaking effort to establish a community driven approach to develop roadmaps for local public health, long‐term and post‐acute care, behavioral health and social services that will provide short and long‐term steps to use e‐health to participate in accountable communities of health. o Assessment of lab and long‐term care settings by creating an informatics profile of the specific domains. o Robust registration and onboarding process for meaningful use o TEFT program is a CMS sponsored program with the Minnesota Department of Human Services that tests feasibility of personal health records for individuals using home and community‐based services. o The Learning Health System is innovative work that will provide the Fellow with an opportunity to research and explore creative and innovation ideas for advancing the learning health system in Minnesota. In brief, The Fellow’s projects are informatics issues associated with several ongoing efforts aimed at creating a more comprehensive, integrated and efficient health system. Day‐to‐ Day Activities Each day will involve a schedule organized by the Fellow that will have some time for collaborating with the OHIT team and other time to work on specific objectives for the project. Some days the work will be in the office and other days will be with other programs within MDH or involve visits to the community. Participation with the University of Minnesota and academic pursuits are an option as well. The fellow with be engaged as a partner in the OHIT teams as a full member of projects and team meetings and to focus on specific projects.
An Informatics Fellowship with the Office of Health IT and e‐Health (OHIT) at the MDH is a fantastic opportunity to be active and integral part of a multidisciplinary team in a dynamic health informatics environment. The OHIT team consists of experienced professionals with a diverse set of expertise such as health informatics, assessments, data analysis, program management, policy development, regulations, communications and outreach. In addition, support structures are in place to help ensure administrative and operational support for the Fellow. The Fellow will work collaboratively with senior public health leaders and staff on a variety of projects. The Fellow will interface with community stakeholders from across Minnesota beginning with the members of the Minnesota e‐Health Advisory Committee (www.health.state.mn.us). In addition, the Fellow will have opportunities for a broad range of other significant learning opportunities and training experiences. Potential Projects include: