Cross-Jurisdictional Data Sharing: Use of the ATra Black Box for Deduplicating Cases in the National HIV Surveillance System.

OBJECTIVES

In 2018, Georgetown University was awarded a 5-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PS18-1805, to deduplicate people across HIV surveillance jurisdictions using the ATra Black Box, an electronic privacy-ensuring system developed by Georgetown University that allows for the secure and streamlined exchange of data between public health jurisdictions. We outline the processes that Georgetown University undertook to engage public health jurisdictions, and we provide results of the Black Box matching sessions from November 2018 through May 2024.

METHODS

Georgetown University recruited jurisdictions for participation in the project from 2018 to 2024 and developed communication plans and documentation to assist jurisdictions with participating in quarterly matching sessions of the Black Box. Georgetown University surveyed jurisdictions to determine technical assistance needs and satisfaction with the project and held virtual and in-person meetings. Georgetown University conducted quarterly runs of the Black Box from 2018 to 2024 and analyzed the results using SAS and Excel.

RESULTS

As of May 2024, Georgetown University had enrolled 40 public health jurisdictions into the CDC Black Box project with signed data-sharing agreements, and 75% of people living with diagnosed HIV in the United States resided in these jurisdictions. From November 2018 through May 2024, Georgetown University conducted 21 quarterly matching sessions of the Black Box, processing >2.1 million records in the November 2023 session.

CONCLUSIONS

Implementation of the Black Box for sharing HIV surveillance data across jurisdictions has decreased the staff time needed to update information on people with HIV. This project has improved the quality of HIV surveillance data that are needed to measure progress on key HIV indicators at the local and national levels.