Emergency Justification letter

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, part of the Department of Health and Human Services

for 2012 Healthy New Year Video Contest

EMERGENCY TRANSFER JUSTIFICATION

Through its Consumer e-Health Program, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), part of the Department of Health and Human Services is working to support and speed up the adoption and use of health IT in ways that benefit and engage consumers. ONC’s strategic approach to engaging consumers in their health is described in the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2011 – 2015, specifically in Goal IV: Empower Individuals with Health IT to Improve their Health and the Health Care System.

ONC is working on a number of fronts to shift attitudes and expectations about consumers being more engaged in their health and leveraging health information technology tools and services to be partners in their care. To that end, ONC is launching a series of video contests in 2012 that will invite people to submit stories about how they’ve leveraged health IT to improve aspects of their health, such as making a New Years’ resolution, managing a chronic condition, or caring for a loved one. These videos will be used to help motivate and inspire others to use to health IT to make improvements in their health and to encourage greater adoption and use of health IT tools.

We are gearing up to launch the first in this series of video challenges—the Healthy New Year Video Contest-- through which members of the public will get a chance to share personal stories about how they use health information technology (health IT) to have a positive impact on their own health or the health of a loved one. Given the focus of the first challenge is on using technology to achieve a New Years resolution to be healthier in 2012, it is imperative that the contest be announced as close to the New Year as possible in order to capitalize on the associated media buzz about this topic which wanes as you get further into 2012. It is also imperative that the submission requirements for the contestants be adequate to accommodate the disabled and to allow the public to sort/filter videos for the purposes of public voting and judging.

There are several pieces of information that we would like to include as part of the submission requirements that may trigger PRA for which we are requesting an emergency clearance. As we understand it, there is a generic clearance guidance document and FAQs in the works that may address some of the PRA issues associated with some of the items that we were planning to require.  However, in the meantime we are looking to find a path forward to release this challenge as close to the new year as possible. The submission requirements for this challenge have precedent and are based off more than two hundred challenges that have been run with other federal agencies on the Challenge.gov platform.

We are requesting emergency clearance to require the submitter to include a written transcript of the works spoke or sung in the video in order to accommodate the disabled community. We are also asking for permission to require the submitters to categorize the video by resolution type and type of technology used in order to facilitate a way to filter and sort the videos for the purposes of improved site usability and voting.

The data is collected under the authority of the PHS Act 42 USC 241. We are requesting OMB’s emergency review and approval of this data collection effort. ONC will publish a press release and Federal Register notice announcing the initiative the week of January 9^th.

2 1/31/2021