On today's installment of the PHIG Impact Report, we talk with Jenn Rico, data modernization and surveillance & informatics supervisor at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. Jenn shares how Montana has used PHIG funding to accelerate statewide data modernization, and invested in leadership, data governance, a new data lake, GIS capacity, and workforce development.
On today's installment of the PHIG Impact Report, we talk with Jenn Rico, data modernization and surveillance & informatics supervisor at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. Jenn shares how Montana has used PHIG funding to accelerate statewide data modernization, and invested in leadership, data governance, a new data lake, GIS capacity, and workforce development. She walks us through Montana’s collaborative approach with its 59 county and tribal public health partners, including a major upgrade and cloud migration of the state’s case surveillance system. Jenn also highlights Montana’s new public-facing query tools, efforts to support data sovereignty, and plans to securely provide direct access to record-level data. Reflecting on the state’s five-year modernization journey, Jennifer discusses what it takes to build systems and culture that last beyond any single grant cycle: prioritizing sustainability, internal capacity, collaboration, and thoughtful use of existing infrastructure.
This work is supported by funds made available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Center for STLT Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce, through OE22-2203: Strengthening U.S. Public Health Infrastructure, Workforce, and Data Systems grant. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.
JOHN SHEEHAN:
This is Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, December 2, 2025. I'm John Sheehan with news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Today, another edition of the PHIG Impact Report. Our guest is Jenn Rico. She is the data modernization and surveillance and informatics supervisor at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, Jenn says that Montana has used the Public Health Infrastructure Grant, or PHIG, funding to accelerate statewide data modernization, invest in leadership and workforce development.
JENN RICO:
We have aligned the funding with the very strategic goals that have been set forth by our Montana Public Health Data Modernization Work Plan. Just to rattle off a few of those, the first one is, you know, identifying someone to lead data modernization efforts. So, my role here within the department is exclusively funded by the- by PHIG. Then we also have been working on data governance, formalizing or enhancing our data governance processes and procedures. We've also been working to strategically develop and implement a public health data warehouse, a data lake, more specifically. And we've also used the PHIG funding to expand our GIS, our geospatial staffing and capabilities here, as well as, like, just the infrastructure, and then we've been doing all of this with a big emphasis on workforce development, so keying-in on ensuring that staff are being trained, are able to attend the trainings that would be beneficial to them and their roles, being able to send them to national conferences. And, you know, connect with peers from other jurisdictions.
SHEEHAN:
And Montana has a lot of different communities. So, what role have local and tribal partnerships played?
RICO:
So, Montana is a very large geographic state, and we have 59 county and tribal public health jurisdictions that we partner with. And you know, like our county and tribal partners are key to- within our data modernization efforts, and ultimately, we want the processes and workflows to help create efficiencies for them. So, as just an example, this May, we modernized our case surveillance system. So, we use the CDC's NNDS case surveillance system. So, not only did we upgrade it, but we also migrated it to the cloud. It was a very large initiative, and from the inception of that project, we knew that we had to have our county and tribal public health partners, those 200-plus users across the state, helping to inform how we did that, and so we partnered with the CDC on this effort. But we also had many, many opportunities where we brought in our county and tribal public health partners to do like, listening sessions and learning sessions with our CDC partners, so CDC could get, like, real hands-on experience about how disease investigators at the local level utilize the system allowing those groups to coordinate, and then the larger effort was that they were going- the CDC would help, like, use that information to help inform how they were going to be modernizing the system.
SHEEHAN:
And how have these efforts transformed how they access that surveillance data?
RICO:
Yeah, so here in Montana, we're currently working on improving the access to county and tribal public health, like directly- to directly access their data. So, we value, obviously, the importance of data sovereignty and data access. And as state employees, we also have to be very good stewards of those data, so we are working to build out infrastructure to provide that data to our partners in a secure fashion. We have started doing that. We recently launched a query tool, a public facing query tool. That tool was informed by the county and tribal public health staff who are able to go on and query by jurisdiction, different public health data indicators. And that information helps not only them to create their county health assessments, but also their county health improvement plans, so their CHIPs and their CHAs, and we're also looking at like a future enhancement is how to get them direct access to the record-level data in a more secure way. Right now, we just transfer those files to them securely, but that's one of the use cases for our- our data lake is being able to provision access directly to those data in a secure method.
SHEEHAN:
And what have you learned from this whole effort?
RICO:
I think our biggest takeaway, there have been many, but as I was reflecting on this, I think the biggest one is that time is just so fleeting. You know, when we started this data modernization journey in late 2021, early 2022, we had five-year awards. And at the time, five years felt like such a long time. And now, as we're kind of like, we're nearing the end of that five-year term, like I reflect back on all that we've accomplished, which has been a tremendous amount of things, but we also have still so far to come. And so I think our biggest takeaway is that in terms of time, like also sustainability has been really important, right? Like we have learned that the funding may or may not remain, and what is of our primary importance to us is just to ensure that we are building out a public health system here in Montana that does sustain not only myself or my my staff and our colleagues, but something that can remain outside of the funding, leveraging infrastructure that's available, not always just rushing to procure like the new shiniest thing, building internal capacity through workforce development and training. That's something that we've continued to learn is just to like, modernize in a sustainable, effective way.
SHEEHAN:
What does sustainable programming look like for data modernization?
RICO:
So, really, I do feel like it's building systems, it's building processes, and it's building a culture within public health that will, like, I said, outlast myself, outlast my colleagues, outlast our partners, right? It means coordinating across the system and even outside of the system with like other, you know, private universities, academic universities, with other programs, leveraging, like I said, existing platforms or tools and knowledge, and then sharing and learning from other jurisdictions across the country, and just like ensuring that we're building that, like fostering and building that into the culture of Montana's public health system, and I feel like PHIG has really been a motivator in that. One, I mean, it is part of the the grant requirements, right, that there is increased coordination and like de-siloing of the public health system, and we've achieved that through implementing the Public Health Data Modernization Advisory Committee and facilitating, like, peer-to-peer learning sessions and developing communities of practice. And, yeah, I think that PHIG has really just set the example, and Montana has- has taken that example and is implementing it in our own way, but in alignment with- with PHIG.
SHEEHAN:
Jenn Rico is the data modernization and surveillance and informatics supervisor at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. This has been a PHIG Impact Report for Public Health Review Morning Edition. I'm John Sheehan for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
