684: Epidemiology Competencies Toolkit, Advancing Vaccine Equity

JANSON SILVERS: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Wednesday, June 12, 2024. I'm Janson Silvers. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

AUER: 

We wanted to create materials that would help you implement the competencies in a variety of settings whether that's in an academic institution or in a state, local, tribal, or territorial health department.

SILVERS: 

Sarah Auer, with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, or CSTE, tells us about a toolkit that CSTE created to help agencies use the applied epidemiology competencies. The applied epidemiology competencies were originally created in 2008 and then updated in 2023. Auer says after the 2023 updates, they realized it would be useful to have a toolkit that assisted agencies and actually using the competencies.

AUER: 

The toolkit was one more way to say, you know, here's step by step instructions, so that you feel like you can integrate these into your health department because we know that will only strengthen the workforce.

SILVERS: 

The toolkit has comprehensive worksheets, interview questions to help with getting the right candidate in the right position, evaluation tools, and two online virtual trainings.

AUER: 

One focuses on everything you would ever need to know about the applied epi competencies and how to use them. And the second focuses on using them specifically for recruitment and retention of epidemiologists, which we know is a priority in the field.

SILVERS: 

You can find the applied Epidemiology Competencies Toolkit by using the link in the show notes.

ASTHO has a new toolkit to help advance vaccine equity. Lillie Seels, the director of practice transformation at the National Community Action Partnership, says this toolkit was developed by using real-world experience.

LILLIE SEELS: 

So we have been on a learning journey, we have been on the actual on the ground journey of increasing access to vaccinations, and certainly, the messaging revolving around vaccinations as well. So, this really is a culmination. I will say from beginning to end of just really all those lessons learned.

SILVERS: 

Seels says it's important to remember that even, "similar communities" can be very different. And the strategies to increase vaccine equity also might need to differ.

SEELS: 

So even if you have two rural communities, they look different. They operate different, there'll be different contexts, different trusted messengers. So it also addresses common barriers to vaccination with practical solutions, and integrates data driven insights for effective measurable interventions.

SILVERS: 

Seels hopes, agencies will look at this toolkit, and it will prompt them to ask important questions.

SEELS: 

How can we grow this right? How can we make this happen? How can we bring things say from a national level or state level and infuse that into our local communities?

SILVERS: 

ASTHO also wrote a blog article on the toolkit in which Seels was quoted. You can find that link in the show notes.

Also today, officials in Guam are engaged in a multi-year process to change the way their health department manages small purchase procurement. They want to be good stewards of federal funds and avoid sending unspent dollars back to Washington D.C. The Chief of Staff to Guam's Governor and Lieutenant Governor, John Junior Calvo says ASTHO's business process improvement approach has been time well spent.

JOHN JUNIOR CALV0: 

Absolutely worth it. In fact, we're again going back out to see if we can get additional technical assistance in other areas. And I think that this has been a very good model for the Department of Public Health and Social Services. But it's also going to be a good model for other agencies to kind of adopt and I'm hoping that's what we're going to be able to see in the next couple of months or even years.

SILVERS: 

You can hear more about Guam's work in a new episode of the Public Health Review podcast. It's available now, everywhere you stream audio. There's also a link in the show notes.

Finally, today ASTHO wants you to be an effective communicator around the topic of the syphilis epidemic. O'Keyla Cooper has more.

O'KEYLA COOPER: 

Join ASTHO for webinar on Monday, June 24, at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, focusing on state communication campaigns to combat the syphilis epidemic. In collaboration with Trillium and the CDC. The session will showcase comprehension campaign blueprints, developed with states like Arizona, Idaho, Michigan, and New York. Attendees will also gain insights into campaign development and implementation strategies. Register now using the link in the show notes.

SILVERS: 

That'll do it for today. We're back tomorrow morning with more ASTHO news and information. I'm Janson Silvers. You're listening to the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition. Have a great day.