AN INFORMATION MANAGER FOR THE ASSESSMENT PROTOCOL FOR EXCELLENCE IN PUBLIC-HEALTH

The Assessment Protocol for Excellence in Public Health (APEXPH) is a method for comprehensive public health planning that can be implemente d by state and local health departments. Many local health departments have limited resources for the data analysis and synthesis needed for APEXPH. To facilitate the implementation of APEXPH in Michigan, we us ed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Epi Info softw are package to develop an APEXPH information manager (CDC-AIM) for use by the 50 local health departments in that state. This report describ es our methods for formatting, compressing, and presenting data. Examp les of tables are provided for demographics by age and sex, numbers of deaths, years of potential life lost, crude mortality rates, and peri natal indicators such as low birthweight. Areas where additional work is needed to further improve CDC-AIM are discussed. Our experience in Michigan suggests that CDC-AIM potentially is an extremely helpful too l to assist state and local health departments in working with their c ommunities to establish public health program plans based on mortality , morbidity, and risk-factor data.