Official Speaker and Presenter — NACCHO 360 & PHI*con 2026

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CDC Foundation | Workforce Acceleration Initiative (WAI)

I was selected as an official speaker and presenter at NACCHO 360 and PHI*con 2026, where I represented the CDC Foundation and Bear River Health Department by presenting "Data Modernization on a Budget: Building a Secure, Affordable, Response-Ready Analytics Platform for Local Health Departments." The presentation showcased how the Bear River Health Department transformed fragmented public health data systems into a secure, scalable, cloud-native analytics platform using modern open-source technologies, providing a practical model that other public health agencies can adopt to accelerate their own data modernization initiatives.

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Presentation Highlights

During the session, I shared the complete end-to-end modernization journey—from legacy, spreadsheet-driven reporting processes to a fully automated cloud analytics platform supporting multiple public health programs.

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Key highlights included:

• Presented a secure, HIPAA-aligned analytics architecture built using Apache NiFi, Google Cloud Storage, Google BigQuery, Metabase, and OpenMetadata, demonstrating how modern cloud technologies can be successfully implemented within local public health agencies.

• Demonstrated end-to-end automated ETL pipelines that ingest, validate, transform, and integrate data from multiple public health systems into a centralized cloud data warehouse, significantly reducing manual reporting efforts while improving data quality and consistency.

• Showcased a scalable and cost-effective modernization framework designed specifically for rural and resource-constrained health departments, enabling enterprise-level analytics without the high costs typically associated with proprietary solutions.

• Explained the importance of data governance through metadata management, lineage tracking, standardized KPI definitions, automated validation, role-based security, and HIPAA-compliant architecture to improve trust, transparency, and long-term maintainability.

• Demonstrated interactive executive dashboards that provide leadership with near real-time visibility into organizational performance, enabling faster operational planning, grant reporting, strategic decision-making, and community health monitoring.

• Introduced a proof-of-concept for Agentic AI-powered data agents, illustrating how artificial intelligence can enable natural language interaction with public health data, automate report generation, summarize complex datasets, and empower non-technical users with self-service analytics capabilities.

• Shared practical implementation lessons, architectural decisions, technical challenges, and best practices learned throughout the project, providing attendees with a realistic roadmap for planning and executing similar modernization initiatives within their own organizations.

• Discussed how combining modern data engineering, cloud-native architecture, open-source technologies, and emerging AI capabilities can create sustainable, future-ready public health data ecosystems that continue delivering value beyond the initial implementation.

• Engaged with public health executives, informatics professionals, epidemiologists, technology leaders, and health department representatives from across the United States, exchanging ideas on scalable modernization strategies and future collaboration opportunities. 

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National Impact

The presentation demonstrated how modern, open-source data engineering can help public health agencies build secure, scalable, interoperable, and cost-effective analytics platforms without relying on expensive proprietary software. By presenting a real-world implementation at the Bear River Health Department, attendees were able to see how automated data pipelines, cloud-native infrastructure, and strong data governance practices can transform fragmented reporting processes into an integrated analytics ecosystem that supports faster, more informed decision-making.

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Beyond the technical architecture, the session emphasized the importance of designing solutions that are practical, affordable, and sustainable for local health departments with limited budgets and technical resources. The modernization approach demonstrated that enterprise-grade analytics capabilities can be achieved using open-source technologies while maintaining security, compliance, scalability, and long-term operational efficiency.

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The presentation also introduced emerging concepts around Agentic AI, highlighting how AI-powered data agents can further modernize public health by enabling natural language data access, intelligent report generation, automated insight discovery, and self-service analytics for non-technical users. These concepts generated discussions about the future role of AI in supporting public health operations, data accessibility, and evidence-based decision-making.

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The session contributed to national conversations on public health data modernization by sharing a practical, field-tested implementation model that other organizations can adapt to their own environments. It also provided an opportunity to exchange knowledge with public health leaders, data professionals, and technology experts who are working to strengthen data infrastructure and digital transformation initiatives across the United States.

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Click below to see more.​

1: linkedin

2: Pulse

3: Naccho