Mission

The Public Health Work Group supports the HL7 mission to empower global health data interoperability by developing standards and enabling their adoption and implementation.  These standards address the requirements of the many public health agencies, both governmental and non-governmental. Specific areas of interest include (but are not limited to):

• human and animal population health monitoring,
• disease and event detection, response and control,
• contact tracing,
• outbreak investigation,
• legal issues including isolation and quarantine,
• immunization,
• vital records,
• public health registries,
• food safety,
• environmental health,
• emergency preparedness and response,
• occupation and health,
• reporting to monitoring and regulatory agencies.

Last reviewed and approved 16 Feb 2023 

Charter

The Public Health Work Group will provide a forum for discussion of interoperability needs by all agencies currently interested in using health information from disparate sources for population-based activities. This includes public, veterinary and environmental health agencies at all levels of government, other Standards Developing Organizations (e.g. OASIS/Emergency Management) and other organizations (e.g. American Immunization Registry Association, Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, Canada Health Infoway, etc.). Other interested international groups are encouraged to participate and contribute to the efforts of the work group.

Work Products and Contributions to HL7 Processes

The Public Health Work Group will provide a forum for HL7 members to discuss and develop models, messages, documents, implementation guides, and services related to its mission. The work group will work with and/or create artifacts across all HL7 product lines (e.g. v2, CDA, FHIR, etc.).  The work group will take into account the experiences of existing jurisdictional, national and international interoperability initiatives and goals.

The messages, documents, and services developed by this work group may also be used to communicate local, state and national health summary information to international monitoring bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Formal Relationships With Other HL7 Groups

Since the scope of population-based care encompasses both cohorts of patients and individual patients in the context of a cohort, the Public Health Work Group will work closely with all product line infrastructure and management groups (v2, CDA, FHIR, TSMG), CIC, Cross Group Projects, Pharmacy, and Orders and Observations  in order to ensure consistency, maximize reuse of current content, and minimize duplicative efforts by the respective groups.

The Public Health WG collaborates with the Helios FHIR Accelerator for Public Health.

Formal Relationship With Groups Outside of HL7

There are no formal relationships with groups outside of HL7.

Last reviewed and approved 16 Feb 2023 

Confirmed use of Standard DMP on 25 Jan 2021 

Ways to Participate

Conference Calls

Regular Public Health WG calls for the current cycle occur every week on Thursdays 1600-1700 ET.

Information is also available on the HL7 Conference Call Center

Agendas and Call in Information

• Conference Call Agendas

Working Group Meetings

• WGM Agendas
• Public Health WG Slides for WGM Slideshow