Respondents generally preferred familiar community health measures versus novel, EHR-based measures that are not in widespread use within health departments. Over 70% of survey respondents reported using community health data, but of those < 30% indicated they had access to sub-county level data.

Perceived usefulness of specific EHR-based community health measures varied by size of respondent’s LHD. Respondents overall indicated moderate agreement on which community health measures might be useful. A one-way ANOVA (with pairwise comparisons) test was used to compare average scores by LHD size. Descriptive statistics were calculated to examine respondents’ perceptions, access, and use.

The survey asked about usefulness of specific community health measures as well as current access to and uses of sub-county population health data. One hundred and thirty-three (133) individuals from thirty-one (31) LHDs participated. To explore perceived usefulness, we conducted an online survey of LHD professionals in Indiana. The objective of this study was to explore local health department (LHD) professionals’ perceptions of the usefulness of EHR-based community health measures, and to examine these perceptions in the context of LHDs’ current access and use of sub-county data, data aggregated at geographic levels smaller than county. of governmental health agencies using EHR data routinely to examine disease prevalence and other measures of community health. Given the widespread adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems in health care organizations, public health agencies are interested in accessing EHR data to improve health assessment and surveillance.

Ehr systems