CHiR honored for community outreach

The Center for Health Information and Research (CHiR) received Arizona State University President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness during an April 16 ceremony. Led by professor William G. Johnson, the center is part of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the School of Computing and Informatics in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. 

The Social Embeddedness award recognizes the community benefits of the center’s work for Arizona. Specifically, the center is being recognized for development of the Arizona HealthQuery, a data bank providing Arizona with community-level information on the health of its residents and on the nature of the health care that they receive. CHiR’s most recent publication estimates the numbers of uninsured persons in each of the zip codes in Maricopa County. Its next report maps the spread of an infection that is resistant to antibiotics (MRSA) in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Arizona HealthQuery is a HIPAA-compliant data warehouse created by a community-University Partnership with sponsorship from the Flinn Foundation, St.Luke’s Health Initiatives and Arizona State University. Detailed information on the Center’s activities can be found at http://chir.asu.edu