1029: PHIG Impact Report: How Utah Builds a Modern Public Health Data System

JOHN SHEEHAN: 

This is Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, November 18, 2025, with news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. I'm John Sheehan.

Today, another edition of the PHIG Impact Report. Our guest is Nicole Yerkes, the data modernization director at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. Nicole says that data modernization is a big part of how Utah is using the grant funding.

NICOLE YERKES: 

I think that something unique in Utah, is we're really trying to push forward our public health system and not just focus on our agency itself, and so doing a lot of efforts to make sure that we're engaging with our local health departments, our tribal public health agencies, and everything that we prioritize and we pick for data modernization, we do as a system, and we pick things that are going to be beneficial for the entire system now and down the line.

SHEEHAN: 

That includes investing in innovations, new technologies, and AI.

YERKES: 

We've been utilizing a little bit of AI in the data modernization space. We were able to jump onto a pilot in the Google Gemini suite and utilize that for qualitative analysis of all 18 of our listening and learning sessions for our DMI strategic plan. We've also been able to do a lot of cool things in the space of laboratory data exchange. We have a great connection with our Utah Public Health Lab, and being able to utilize the laboratory data exchange funding has been fantastic for our informatics program to develop a centralized quality assurance dashboard that modernizes and automates Utah's electronic laboratory reporting for quality assurance and quality check processes, and so they can review those in real-time with reporter performance data and providing actionable insights to health care partners for reporting performance improvement, resulting in improved downstream data for public health surveillance.

SHEEHAN: 

And in order for all these modernization practices to be successful, there had to be collaboration, particularly across Utah's decentralized health system.

YERKES: 

One of the primary things that we did when we first started operating under this initiative with data modernization is get our Data Modernization Council in place. And so, we put a lot of effort into developing a strategic council that has a lot of people at the table, a lot of voices across the public health system. We divided that up into three tiers, so, we have our executive tier of the DMI Council; that's the executive decision makers at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, as well as our local health department, tribal public health agencies, just ensuring that our leadership across the board is in alignment with what we're trying to do with data modernization. They're really helping drive our strategy and our vision. And then we have our leadership tier that has the grant PIs, subject matter experts, system owners, EPIs, and really trying to cover all areas of our public health landscape. So, chronic disease, infectious disease, environmental health, health equity, preparedness. And we have local tribal DHHS as well as non-traditional public health partners at that leadership tier level. We have a couple people from our health information exchange part, another couple from our One Utah Digital Health Collaborative, some from higher education. And then we have our working collaborator tier as well. That's the groups that are actually doing the projects and doing the work. Right now, we have our chronic disease data modernization work group that's working through chronic disease-focused data modernization projects creating our chronic disease data modernization strategic plan. And we also have our data-sharing and shared data environment work group as well as our immunizations work group. Lot going on, and it's all centralized within that DMI council that then ties into our in-statute governing bodies. Anything that's related to public health in the state of Utah has to go through a process called governance. So, anytime we're trying to do something with DMI that has to do with policy, rule, or funding, we do have that check with our governance group, and then for our tribal public health agencies, we do go through the Utah Indian Health Advisory Board. So, we have all those workflows, and it all connects in together and really just trying to make sure that we're working together as a system through all of this and governing what we do.

SHEEHAN: 

Relatedly, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services has utilized internships and partnering with universities in and outside Utah to open up a pipeline of getting interns into the public health arena.

YERKES: 

Dr. Michael Cox, our training coordinator underneath the Public Health Infrastructure Grant, has done a really tremendous job with expanding our general internship program. It was through her internship program that I was connected to our intern that we have right now in the data modernization team, and she's doing tremendous work, building out our shared data environment, moving along our data catalog, and then also helping with QA and our ECR work, and so just really strengthening and building that internship program is giving us access to elevated skills in the informatics workspace, in data visualization, in epidemiology, and really moving us towards having a stronger academic health department with our universities as well. And this is super crucial and key for our health department and being able to bring in new talent and really show those that are in school right now what it's like to work in a state health department. We also have connections with our Salt Lake County Health Department, so you can have opportunity to see what it's like to work at the state level and the local level, and really get that robust experience as an intern.

SHEEHAN: 

And central to all of this data modernization work is sustainable funding.

YERKES: 

That's the number one thing that people are talking about in this space of data modernization is sustainability in funding and how crucial it is. We're putting a lot of effort into optimizing our data systems, moving into the cloud, making sure we have privacy and security parameters around it, upskilling our workforce, bringing in interns to that internship program. And none of this will be possible if we don't have sustainable funding long-term. I know that's been a big question for our teams at the Utah Department of Health is, how much energy do you put towards bringing in a brand new system or really revamping something? If we don't know what the funding is going to look like a year from now, we need to make sure that we're able to maintain the skilled workforce that worked on these projects, and we're able to get our systems into the places that we need them to be, and then maintain them. You know, it's not just a one-time initiative where we can just modernize everything and then we're good for the next 20 years. Technology is constantly evolving, and to be able to stay up to speed with where the rest of the nation is, we need to have ongoing funding and continued funding to continue optimizing, to continue modernizing, to continue upskilling our workforce. And that's not something that can be done with just a one-year funding pot and then, voila, we've done it. It's something that is going to be a cultural shift that we need to maintain within our agencies moving forward, and find a way to have sustainable funding for that.

SHEEHAN: 

Nicole Yerkes is the data modernization director at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. She spoke about how Utah is utilizing the Public Health Infrastructure Grant.

This has been another PHIG Impact Report. You can learn more about PHIG at phinfrastructure (one word) .org, or in our show notes.

I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Public Health Review Morning Edition from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.