About Technical Assistance and Training

During the initial NMI pilot, CDC is partnering with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) to provide technical assistance (TA) to certain state and local jurisdictions to implement the initial six HL7 case notification messages, which are Generic v2, Hepatitis, STD, Congenital Syphilis, Mumps, and Pertussis.

Through this NMI Technical Assistance Coordination Team, CDC and its partners will help jurisdictions adopt Message Mapping Guides (MMGs) and use them to test and send case notification messages to the CDC Message Validation, Processing, and Provisioning System (MVPS) to ensure that these messages will be properly received, processed, and stored for analysis through this new system.

CDC, in collaboration with CSTE and APHL, will provide direct technical assistance and training in the form of webinars, online technical guides, and other training materials to support implementation for all jurisdictions.

The TA team will offer three types of hands-on TA:

1. On-site: Key members of the TA team will travel to the jurisdiction to provide hands-on support and consulting for 2–3 days.
2. Virtual: The TA team will provide support via web conferencing and teleconferences for jurisdictions that have all the necessary resources to complete the project with minimal assistance.
3. Hybrid: A specific TA team member will be assigned to the jurisdiction to help fill any knowledge or resources gaps while the jurisdiction participates in web conferencing and teleconference trainings.

In addition to TA, participating jurisdictions will receive templates, standardized information, checklists, and other tools that can be reusable and adaptable for future MMGs to help support a common approach to meeting the goals of NMI. In addition, these resources will be compiled in a virtual toolkit that will be available on the CDC NMI TA website for any jurisdiction to use.