Modernized, Streamlined Data Sharing Helps Utah Respond Better and Faster to Public Health Threats

January 13, 2026

Utah is consolidating its data systems and data sharing agreements to allow public health leaders to use data to drive targeted, rapid responses to health threats in their communities. In this video, Nicole Yerkes, Data Modernization Director at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, explains how PHIG funding is helping the state streamline data sharing and put critical information into the hands of the right people, right when they need it most.

By creating a shared data environment and a consolidated data sharing agreement, local health departments will be able to easily access vital records, Office of the Medical Examiner data, immunization data, and more through a single agreement. Prior to this, getting data sharing agreements in place took up to six to eight months. This new approach will allow for faster, more targeted responses to public health events, such as measles outbreaks, and give local health departments the tools to protect and improve health at the community level.

Video Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

How have you been able to use PHIG funding?

The Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) has provided a lot of opportunity to think outside of the box and think through more innovative solutions on how we can get the right people the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.

One of the primary areas that we were seeing in Utah that could use a little help was streamlining our data-sharing agreement process and the way in which our external partners are able to get the data that they need to respond to what is happening in their communities.

Rather than trying to create separate data sharing agreements for all of the different state-owned data systems, we’re trying a new approach where we’ve created a shared data environment, utilizing our data warehouse, that will have all the different data elements that our local partners would need access to. They can just log into that shared data environment, and then they only need to sign the one data sharing agreement to have access to that shared environment. This means they will be able to pull down the data that is relevant to them in real time.

We’re starting right now with vital records data. That was something that came out from our local health departments as something they needed more immediately and were having trouble accessing. We’re going to start with vital records data, and our next steps would be to start pulling in more data from our Office of the Medical Examiner, so there will be additional data variables (via the Office of the Medical Examiner) that they’re not able to get right now through the vital records system. Then we’ll move beyond that to immunizations data and continue to grow and expand on that over time as the needs arise, but hopefully, this is going to make it a lot easier for our local health departments to get the data that they need.

For our local health departments that are trying to respond to something happening in their community and need additional data around that event, this will be a big help. For example, with COVID-19, there were a lot of deaths associated with COVID, and maybe had some interaction with COVID, where maybe it wasn’t the cause of death, but it was a contributing factor. The way it’s set up right now within our Office of the Medical Examiner is that you have to manually abstract that information from the narrative. By having additional variables in our data system for the Office of the Medical Examiner, we can better pull that information out and have a more robust response for the community on what’s contributing to that death.

How is this process driving efficiencies?

The length of time that it’s been taking to get a data sharing agreement in place was up to six months or eight months. With this shared data environment, we won’t really need to go through those negotiations as much. You’ll have access to your data faster, and then maybe if you need more granular data or more specific data for your community, we can go into those negotiations on a case-by-case basis – but you’re not holding up the entire process for your full sharing agreement going through those negotiations. Just having that streamlined process of being able to have data faster is huge for being able to respond appropriately to whatever that need may be in your community.

Our hallmark under data modernization in Utah is that the right people have the right information at the right time to make informed decisions for the health of their community.

How can Utah use data to take action?

In the case of measles response, having a better sense of what your coverage is in your community and where your lower vaccination rate pockets are gives you an opportunity to do targeted intervention in that community. Increasing vaccine rates, or increasing education around vaccines, or how you can be proactive in preventing measles from entering your community when we know that it’s around the community in another area, and starting to increase, we can then target areas with really low vaccination rates. We can use our community health workers to partner with a community-based organization and do education and targeted outreach.