Tennessee launches state health-data hub with new asthma dashboards, limited by privacy rules

Tennessee Department of Health environmental epidemiologist David Borowski and Rachel Weaver, an environmental epidemiologist in TDH’s Health Tracking program, introduced a new state Health Data website and previewed an asthma dashboard the department plans to publish by the next quarterly meeting.

TDH said the site will centralize asthma resources, host webinar recordings and provide public access to hospital discharge and emergency-department datasets that TDH submits annually to the CDC’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking program. “Asthma is one of the nationally consistent data measures that CDC tracks,” Rachel Weaver said, describing the tracking grant and the state’s data submissions.

Weaver and TDH staff emphasized that data governance and privacy protections limit public release of highly granular records. She said TDH’s data-governance team uses a scoring system to assess re-identification risks and that some datasets remain private pending approval. Weaver outlined technical mitigations under consideration, including wider age groups, combining years, and coarser geographic units rather than releasing highly specific ZIP-code or individual-level files.

TDH staff encouraged practitioners who need more detailed data to provide feedback or pursue formal data-use agreements and Institutional Review Board reviews, which they said can permit access but take additional time and paperwork. Weaver directed users to the CDC tracking site for the most current comparable multi-state data and said an asthma Tableau dashboard for Tennessee would go live by the next quarterly meeting.

The department posted contact information in the chat (eep.healthtn.gov) and tn.gov/healthyhomes as the central landing page for registration and recordings. Hosts said they will continue quarterly meetings on May 9, Aug. 8 and Nov. 14 at noon CST to collect feedback and refine the site.

The presentation left open when finer geographic breakdowns will be available; TDH said that decision will be driven by demand and data-governance approvals.