The Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center's EpiData Center (EDC) celebrated its 10th anniversary May 4.

Founded May 2006, the EDC provides health surveillance to the Department of the Navy and reach-back support to the Department of Defense, making it possible for military health care providers and professionals to assess medical readiness in support of Force Health Protection and identify, treat, and prevent disease.

The EDC collects data, including personnel and military health system data, from a variety of available administrative sources, analyzes that data, and uses the findings to address public health concerns within the DON.

Over the past 10 years the EDC has grown significantly, expanding its team of epidemiologists, information technology specialists, and program analysts from five staff members in 2006 to more than 40 in 2016.

The expansion was necessary to address the constantly changing landscape with respect to public health threats that can potentially impact total force readiness.

In 2004, Dr. Chris Rennix, NMCPHC's EpiData Center department head, proposed the establishment of a health surveillance center that would focus on communicable disease and injury, and later spearheaded the development and launch of the EDC in 2005.

"NMCPHC allowed us to focus on operational forces, encouraged us to seek input and develop projects to meet their needs, and let us expand on what we could do here," said Rennix. "Within a set of requirements, they allowed us to be creative in our approach."

Over the years, the EDC has contributed to numerous efforts that help ensure mission readiness of DoD service members stationed across the globe. In 2015, the EDC completed more than 620 reports.

In 2010, the EDC began developing Force Health Surveillance Reports that provide an overall assessment of mental health within operational commands to include data from medical encounters, pharmacy transactions, and deployment health assessments. These reports are now distributed to 10 separate operational units with a distribution of over 200 customers.

"We started these reports with just a few customers, but as the word got out of our capabilities, more and more people requested to receive the reports or to add their DON community to the list of reports created," said Tina Luse, division officer for Deployment Health.

The EDC's growth and success could not have been possible without the collaboration and cooperation of everyone involved. "It's a team effort between the civil service, command, and contract staffs," said Rennix. [All of them] have a huge impact on our influence and growth."

Some of the EDC's current projects involve working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Veterans Affairs to analyze suicide risk in vulnerable populations, providing data support for emerging infections of global threat, and releasing Periodic Health Assessments to all active duty and reserve members of the Navy and Marine Corps. The electronic PHA began in 2015 and is expected to have over 750,000 users once it is officially initiated in the summer of 2016.

In addition to providing the surveillance that protects the health and well-being of all military service members, the EDC is looking forward to making its work more accessible to the DoD military health care community, and even the civilian population.

"The future vision is to get our knowledge on the web in a manner where military public health officials can use it more," said Rennix.

For more information about the EDC, visit http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmcphc/epi-data-center/Pages/default.aspx.

For more news from Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, visit http://www.navy.mil/.