title: All Kids Count Connections: a community of practice on integrating child health information systems.
abstract: Integrated child health information systems consolidate data about multiple health care services a child receives into information useful to families, private health care providers, public health officials, and others. The challenges to successful integration faced by public health agencies are similar, yet system integration projects have historically struggled in isolation to overcome these barriers. All Kids Count created a community of practice called Connections to bring together 11 state and local public health agencies engaged in child health information system integration projects to learn from each other, capture best practices, and collaboratively address challenges. As demonstrated by All Kids Count Connections, communities of practice can be employed by geographically distributed public health agencies to address complex issues.
authors.affiliation: All Kids Count, Public Health Informatics Institute, Task Force for Child Survival and Development, Decatur, GA 30030, USA. ewild@phii.org
authors.forename: Ellen L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Wild
authors.forename: Patricia A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Richmond
authors.forename: Louis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: de Merode
authors.forename: John D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002662:Child Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006077:Government Agencies; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration*; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011635:Public Health Administration; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D018511:Systems Integration