Sometimes, even the most familiar conference surprises you. The large attendance at the CSTE 2026 Annual Conference (2,400+ participants) wasn’t surprising; neither were the vibrant conversations, the rich content and the showcase of the impressive work the CSTE members are doing and sharing. I have attended CSTE’s annual conference every year since 2011. I know my space here, as an informatics expert, I share my knowledge, I network, and I learn. I talk to a lot of people I know, and I meet a lot of new people. As a proud sponsor and exhibitor, HLN connected with many attendees regarding eCR, FHIR, data modernization, data governance, interoperability, and AI.
In conference sessions, we shared our work on a Maturity Model HLN created for public health agencies to measure their data modernization progress, and we had a very insightful, deep-dive discussion about maturity models alongside our partners at PHII and the CDC Foundation.
Then, at 7:30 on the last day, I stepped into a nugget of a session in one of the smaller rooms, where there was a discussion about the book Influenza and Inequality: One Town’s Tragic Response to the Great Epidemic of 1918, with the author Patricia Fanning. And I remembered why I do this work and why it’s so important: if we don’t do it, people will die, and even more sadly, nobody will be there to tell their stories and improve what we do for the next disease challenge.
We did learn from history, we did go through the COVID-19 pandemic better than in 1918, and as the author said, “nobody told their story, and that’s just why I wrote the book.” I remember the epidemiologist I worked with during the COVID-19 pandemic, who wrote down, by hand, on a legal pad, the name of every person who died, reminding us every day that these are not just numbers, they represent people.
So my takeaway from this conference is, whatever you do, at your next conference, step into the room with the presentation where you will not just learn more about what you already know, but hear something you didn’t know, and connect with people you didn’t already know.
Thank you, CSTE, for this year’s conference. I will see you all in Minneapolis in 2027.
HLN presented the following abstract at the conference:
From Strategy to Implementation: Leveraging a Foundational Maturity Model to Guide Data Modernization for Public Health in the session “A New Team Party: Throwing Out Dated Technology for Modern Solutions”. It was a pleasure to participate in this session together with speakers from the Utah Department of Health, APHL, the Virginia Department of Health, and ASTHO.
Other reflections from the HLN team
“At this year’s CSTE Conference, I was very impressed by how proactively PHAs are problem-solving to do more with less under the current funding landscape. I was also struck by the number of presentations in Surveillance & Informatics sessions related to electronic case reporting, and how far PHAs have come from the challenges of trying to ingest eCR data to now actively using the data to drive their daily public health work.”
“I am someone who historically has worked more in the immunization world, and this was my first CSTE Conference. It was gratifying to see that the attending members and organizations are as passionate as they can possibly be, taking patient health extremely seriously while simultaneously dealing with immense political and administrative hurdles.”
“A theme of this year’s conference was resilience in the face of obstacles. I was inspired by the creative solutions that PHAs are employing to navigate the challenges of reduced funding and decreased public trust. It was also very exciting to attend so many presentations about electronic case reporting and to see how much the eCR landscape has advanced in the last few years. These words from Dr. Bisola Ojikutu’s Plenary Session presentation particularly stuck with me: “Public health is political, but should not be partisan.”