[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 12 (Wednesday, January 20, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 3144-3146]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-00937]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

[60 Day-16-0853; Docket No. CDC-2016-0007]


Proposed Data Collection Submitted for Public Comment and 
Recommendations

AGENCY: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of 
Health and Human Services (HHS).

ACTION: Notice with comment period.

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SUMMARY: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as part 
of its continuing efforts to reduce public burden and maximize the 
utility of government information, invites the general public and other 
Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or 
continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork 
Reduction Act of 1995. This notice invites comment on the revision of 
the ``Asthma Information Reporting System (AIRS)'' information 
collection plan. The purpose of AIRS is to collect performance measure 
and surveillance data spreadsheets designed to increase the efficiency 
and effectiveness of state asthma programs and to monitor the impact of 
the state and national programs.

DATES: Written comments must be received on or before March 21, 2016.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments, identified by Docket No. CDC-2016-
0007 by any of the following methods:
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: Regulation.gov. Follow the 
instructions for submitting comments.
     Mail: Leroy A. Richardson, Information Collection Review 
Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road 
NE., MS-D74, Atlanta, Georgia 30329.
    Instructions: All submissions received must include the agency name 
and Docket Number. All relevant comments received will be posted 
without change to Regulations.gov, including any personal information 
provided. For access to the docket to read background documents or 
comments received, go to Regulations.gov.

    Please note:  All public comment should be submitted through the 
Federal eRulemaking portal (Regulations.gov) or by U.S. mail to the 
address listed above.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: To request more information on the 
proposed project or to obtain a copy of the information collection plan 
and instruments, contact the Information Collection Review Office, 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road NE., MS-
D74, Atlanta, Georgia 30329; phone: 404-639-7570; Email: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 
(PRA) (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520), Federal agencies must obtain approval from 
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for each collection of 
information they conduct or sponsor. In addition, the PRA also requires 
Federal agencies to provide a 60-day notice in the Federal Register 
concerning each proposed collection of information, including each new 
proposed collection, each proposed extension of existing collection of 
information, and each reinstatement of previously approved information 
collection before submitting the collection to OMB for approval. To 
comply with this requirement, we are publishing this notice of a 
proposed data collection as described below.
    Comments are invited on: (a) Whether the proposed collection of 
information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of 
the agency, including whether the information shall have practical 
utility; (b) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the 
proposed collection of information; (c) ways to enhance the quality, 
utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; (d) ways to 
minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents, 
including through the use of automated collection techniques or other 
forms of information technology; and (e) estimates of capital or start-
up costs and costs of operation, maintenance, and purchase of services 
to provide information. Burden means the total time, effort, or 
financial resources expended by persons to generate, maintain, retain, 
disclose or provide information to or for a Federal agency. This 
includes the time needed to review instructions; to develop, acquire, 
install and utilize technology and systems for the purpose of 
collecting, validating and verifying information, processing and 
maintaining information, and disclosing and providing information; to 
train personnel and to be able to respond to a collection of 
information, to search data sources, to complete and review the 
collection of information; and to transmit or otherwise disclose the 
information.

Proposed Project

    Asthma Information and Reporting System (AIRS)--(OMB Control No. 
0920-0853; exp. 05/31/2016)--Revision--National Center for 
Environmental Health (NCEH), Centers

[[Page 3145]]

for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Background and Brief Description

    In 1999, the CDC began its National Asthma Control Program (NACP), 
a population-based public health approach to address the burden of 
asthma. The program supports the goals and objectives of ``Healthy 
People 2010'' for asthma and is based on the public health principles 
of surveillance, partnerships, interventions, and evaluation. The CDC 
requests to revise the ``Asthma Information and Reporting System 
(AIRS)'' (OMB Control No. 0920-0853; expiration date 5/31/2016). The 
goal of this data collection is to provide NCEH with routine 
information about the activities and performance of the state and 
territorial awardees funded under the NACP through an annual reporting 
system. As regular reporting of this information is a requirement of 
the cooperative agreement mechanism utilized to fund state asthma 
control programs, a three-year extension for PRA clearance is 
requested.
    This data collection was first approved by OMB in 2010 to collect 
data in a Web-based system to monitor and guide participating state 
health departments. Since implementation in 2010, AIRS and the 
technical assistance provided by CDC staff have provided states with 
uniform data reporting methods and linkages to other states' asthma 
programs and data. Thus, AIRS has saved state resources and staff time 
when asthma programs embark on asthma activities similar to those done 
elsewhere. Furthermore, access to standardized surveillance and 
programmatic data allows CDC to provide timely and accurate responses 
to the public and Congress regarding the NACP (e.g., trends in rates of 
hospital discharges and emergency department visits, how many states 
have asthma interventions targeting schools or day care facilities, 
etc.). In the past three-years, AIRS data were used to:
    [ssquf] Serve as a resource to the branch, division, and center 
when addressing congressional, departmental and institutional 
inquiries;
    [ssquf] Help the branch align its current interventions with CDC 
goals and allowed the monitoring of progress toward these goals;
    [ssquf] Allow the NACP and the state asthma programs to make more 
informed decisions about activities to achieve objectives;
    [ssquf] Facilitate communication about interventions across states, 
and enable inquiries regarding interventions by populations with a 
disproportionate burden, age groups, geographic areas and other 
variables of interest.
    Aggregated data from AIRS was presented at the 2015 State Asthma 
Grantee in Atlanta for the purposes of providing feedback to the state 
programs, clarifying CDC's expectations of the awardees and obtaining 
feedback from the awardees to CDC on the measures and the process of 
submitting information. Also, a presentation about the performance 
measurement development and implementation process was given in Chicago 
at the 2015 American Evaluation Association (AEA) annual meeting.
    A revision is necessary because: (1) The Web-based reporting 
platform is no longer supported by CDC; (2) in collaboration with state 
asthma programs, reporting requirements have been prioritized to 
provide specific information on the two main strategies in the FOA: 
Services (home visits and school-based self-management education) and 
services strategies (improving quality of medical management, improving 
referrals to and communication with school and home-based providers and 
increasing provision or reimbursement for non-clinical asthma services 
by health plans); and (3) CDC now endorses limiting state program 
reporting to once a year. AIRS also includes forms to collect aggregate 
emergency department (ED) visit and hospital discharge (HD) data from 
awardees. As in the previous version of AIRS, NACP requires awardees to 
report hospital discharge and emergency department visit counts by 19 
age groups to permit age adjusted rates and thus monitor the state 
programs' performance in reducing the burden of asthma. Specifically, 
CDC seeks to make the following changes:
     Rather than using the web-based system, state awardees 
will use AIRS Excel spreadsheets to report CDC-developed outcome 
performance measures.
     The performance measures will be collected annually, 
rather than biannually as previously approved.
    There will be no cost for respondents other than the time taken to 
complete the 3 three AIRS spreadsheets. With this revision, the number 
of awardees has been reduced from 34 to 23 states, and the total 
estimated annual burden hours are reduced from 288 to 82 hours.

                                        Estimated Annualized Burden Hours
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                                                                     Number of    Average burden
      Type of respondents           Form name        Number of     responses per   per response    Total burden
                                                    respondents     respondent       (in hrs.)       (in hrs.)
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State Asthma Program Awardees.  AIRS Reporting                23               1             2.5              58
                                 Spreadsheets.
                                Emergency                     23               1           30/60              12
                                 Department
                                 Visits
                                 Reporting Forms.
                                Hospital                      23               1           30/60              12
                                 Discharge
                                 Reporting Forms.
                                                 ---------------------------------------------------------------
    Total.....................  ................  ..............  ..............  ..............              82
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[[Page 3146]]

Leroy A. Richardson,
Chief, Information Collection Review Office, Office of Scientific 
Integrity, Office of the Associate Director for Science, Office of the 
Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[FR Doc. 2016-00937 Filed 1-19-16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4163-18-P