Overview

April 24
10AM PT, 1PM ET

Register

Vital records offices are essential – but increased demand combined with outdated processes and staffing shortages are making it harder than ever to keep up.

Every day, people rely on your office for birth and death certificates, marriage records, and other critical documents. Manual workflows, siloed systems, and limited resources are slowing operations down. What if you could streamline service delivery to exceed customer expectations and still reduce staff burden?

Join Government Technology and LexisNexis Risk Solutions for a practical discussion on how vital records teams are embracing innovative practices within their offices to work faster, serve residents better and meet ever-changing customer needs. 

What You’ll Learn:

    • The simple process shifts that are saving agencies time and money—without cutting corners on accuracy and security
    • How advanced technology offerings within the vital records ecosystem are improving service without increasing workload
    • Real-world examples of how state and local agencies are modernizing vital records operations while staying compliant with unique jurisdictional laws
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Speakers

Lynette Childs headshot

Lynette Childs

Market Strategist of Vital Records Management, LexisNexis® Risk Solutions

Lynette Childs holds the position of Director of Market Planning, Vital Records at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, where she directs the vital records market and works diligently to advance the vital records ecosystem for the 57 jurisdictions across the United States. Her role is pivotal in providing vision and a profound understanding of the needs of the vital records community, government agencies, and public health sectors. Lynette's academic background is rooted in science, with a Bachelor of Science in Genetics and Bacteriology. Her diverse career spans science, technology, organizational leadership and management, and public health, showcasing her versatile expertise. Most recently, she brought her deep subject matter expertise to the state level, serving as the State Registrar for Wisconsin, where she oversaw the complex vital statistics program and championed the integrity and accuracy of vital records data. Her current responsibilities include developing solution fit across key market segments, conducting market research, assessing customer needs and use cases, forecasting ROI, and leading product development and enhancements designed to serve the needs of the vital records community. Lynette aligns standards and collaborates extensively with product, sales, marketing, and engineering teams to ensure alignment and turn a vision into execution.

Terra Ankrah headshot

Terra Ankrah

Assistant Division Director, Data and Opportunity, Division of Public Health AND State Registrar Office of Vital Records, State Center for Health Statistics, Division of Public Health

Terra Ankrah serves as the North Carolina Division of Public Health Assistant Division Director for Data and Opportunity. In this capacity, she provides oversight for the State Center for Health Statistics, which includes the Office of Vital Records, the Division’s Data Modernization initiatives, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Terra also serves as the North Carolina State Registrar. Prior to this role, Terra served as the Strategic Director for the North Carolina Office of Vital Records (NCOVR). In this role, she was responsible for leadership and strategic planning for the state’s vital records/statistics system and for guiding the day-to-day management of NCOVR. Terra directed efforts to eliminate backlog, implement new technologies, streamline, and modernize processes, digitize paper files, and more. Formerly, Terra served as State Registrar for the DC Health Vital Records Division. Projects she directed for DC Health included the digitization of more than 4 million District of Columbia birth and death records; Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) integration between the Electronic Death Registration System and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner; data management, reporting and visualization enhancement and automation; electronic vital event registration workflow reengineering; implementation of an enterprise document management system; systems integration and automation of walk-up fulfillment center point of sale systems; comprehensive rewriting of the District of Columbia’s vital records law and implementing rules; various process reengineering efforts; and more.

Sandra Lackey headshot

Sandra Lackey

Registrar of Vital Records, City of Austin, Texas

Sandra Lackey is the Registrar of Vital Records for the City of Austin, Texas, a role she has held since July 2013. In this role, she has had the opportunity to see first-hand how important birth and death certificates are to individuals and how important timely and efficient access to those records really is. Sandra retired from the Texas Vital Statistics Section in June 2013, after an impressive 31 years of state service. For the last few years before retirement, Sandra’s role was Manager of Electronic Registration, contributing significantly to the modernization of vital records management in Texas. Sandra is also an avid gardener and proud Mimi to her two beautiful granddaughters, which brings her immense joy and fulfillment.

Judy Nagy headshot

Judy Nagy

State Registrar of the Office of Vital Statistics, Ohio Dept of Health

Judy Nagy is the Chief of Vital Statistics, and has been with the program for almost 25 years. She started as an assistant registrar and was tasked to help build funding and consensus for improving the statewide system. Over the past 20 years, Ohio’s vital records have been able to establish new fees, standardize certificate forms, completely digitize all 100+ years of birth records, and modernize the data collection of over 200,000 birth and death events that happen each year. Judy is passionate about how to create a system that can be utilized to track public health needs, as well as to allow timely data to flow to other data customers, so individuals can use real-time data to make decisions that impact the public. Judy has two bachelor’s degrees from The Ohio State University that focus on heath information management and business administration. Previous jobs include 5+ years as a medical records manager and 2 years as a training consultant for a mental health software company, allowing her the ability to see the impact vital records has at all levels of operation. Currently, Ohio is getting to launch a new software application for the reporting of all births, deaths, and fetal deaths this year, as well as making plans to have the only national birth certificate kiosk, where a customer can apply, pay, and receive a certified birth record without any manual intervention. Ohio continues to work towards integrating birth and death data needs with our state offices, as well as working with hospitals to directly receive medical record data for the completion of all records.

Jennifer Kent headshot

Jennifer Kent — Moderator

Senior Fellow, Center for Digital Government

Jennifer Kent has more than fifteen years of extensive health administration and policy experience in California that spans over three gubernatorial administrations and encompasses both private and public delivery systems. As Director, Kent oversaw the second largest public healthcare system in the nation with an annual budget of over $100B and serving approximately 13 million Californians. She oversaw the administration of twenty-four managed care plans as well as 56 county behavioral health plans. Kent has also held leadership roles in the Health & Human Services Agency and Governor’s offices as well as experience in the private sector as a lobbyist, consultant and association executive.

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