Aida Semere is a Product and Grants Manger on the CRISP DC team. Joining in 2020, she started as a project support intern before transitioning into project management and overseeing the entire project team. She holds a BA in Public Health and Information Systems, with a Master’s in Health Information Technology.
Aida, representing CRISP DC, presented alongside representatives from Children’s National Medical Center, on the Collaborative for Attendance Resources for Education and Health (CARE-H) project at the May 2024 Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) conference held in Toronto, Canada. Read on to hear more about her presentation and experience at the conference.
The team held a workshop for pediatric providers interested in integrating attendance into primary care, while also shining a light on how they could partner with their local HIE on this effort. It was a great opportunity for CRISP DC to share how we play the role of being the secure mechanism for transferring attendance data for students consented into the project between DC Public Schools and Children’s National, while also contributing clinical data to help inform why students are absent when the hospital conducts outreach. Above all, the conference was an educational opportunity about the various ways an HIE, as a health data utility, can support in non-traditional public health initiatives, such as tackling the very real phenomenon of chronic absenteeism in DC. After the conference, I received many questions from providers about how CRISP DC works and many people expressed that their takeaway was to ensure they connect to their state HIE. I enjoyed my experience presenting at PAS and I look forward to sharing the partnerships and work we do in this realm at the CIE San Diego summit in June!
