807: ASTHO President Praises PHIG

SUMMER JOHNSON: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, December 10, 2024. I'm Summer Johnson. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

First up today is the PHIG Impact Report. Twice a month, we'll bring you this segment that showcases the Public Health Infrastructure Grant, otherwise known as PHIG, how your colleagues across the nation are using it, and how it's impacting the U.S. public health system. Today's interview is with ASTHO President, Dr. Scott Harris. Harris is the state health officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health.

Dr. Harris, as you know, this segment really aims to give a complete picture of PHIG. So, for you and your team in Alabama, how has it gone?

SCOTT HARRIS: 

PHIG has just been a tremendous success for us here. We have really appreciated access to this line of funding. We have a team here that's worked really hard and use it in a lot of really interesting ways. One of the first things we did with PHIG funding is to actually hire recruiters who are public health staff, who are based in different areas around the state, who look for new public health employees. Each of our recruiters are based in a specific geographic area, and so they're actually familiar with schools and colleges and other organizations in that area that might be a funnel to us for students. They engage them through health fairs or just through social media, or, you know, other ways, so that people understand what we do in public health. We also have added some regional members of our HR team that are based in our districts that help people navigate the hiring process in state government. You know, I don't know if everyone's state personnel process is as opaque as Alabama's, but it is really hard to navigate, even when you have somebody that's trying to help you, and it could take months from the time you first apply for a job until you're really in a position that you could even be hired. So, besides just recruiting students with our recruiters, we also have used HR people to help people negotiate the hiring process, and we have really found quality candidates that we would have never found otherwise because of this process, and we've been able to keep them through the hiring process, keep them interested, and keep them engaged so that we can successfully bring them here. We have a lot of social media outreach that we've done using PHIG money, as well. Various social media platforms where we're showing, you know, a day in the life of a environmentalist, or the day in the life of a clinic nurse, or the day in the life of disease intervention specialists. And those have really gotten good reviews. A lot of people have told us that they first saw one of those and became interested in working for us. So finally, I would say, we've used PHIG to really just plug gaps. You know, we have certain programs that were just never adequately funded before. You know, public health has always had this boom and bust cycle, you know, where we just don't have adequate funding to do all the things that we want, until there's a big crisis and problem, and suddenly the money comes in, but it's time-limited, and then it cuts away again. So, PHIG has really helped us to address a lot of that.

JOHNSON: 

Are there any specific wins that you attribute to PHIG?

HARRIS: 

I would say the first thing that's happened is that we realize that we're retaining staff much better than we were previously. Some of that is because we're able to add new team members, new enthusiastic, somewhat idealistic public health staff are joining these programs. They were really short on staff and needed a lot of help. And I think that's helped us to retain people in a way. One way that PHIG has been really helpful is that, you know, at the time the pandemic started in 2020, we actually had a county without any county health department in the county. It had closed several years ago because of funding. We were still managing to cover that county with some services, like environmental services, from adjacent counties, but there was really no facility there for us to base our team to do things like WIC or even vital statistics or a basic county health department things. So, PHIG has been very helpful in allowing us to add teams that are doing that. We were able to leverage other monies by supplanting some things we did with PHIG. And so now, we finally have a true statewide state health department again, which was a real triumph for us.

JOHNSON: 

Retaining staff and adding additional supports are very important, but to do that, of course, you need funding. While PHIG has been incredible, it isn't lasting. So, we'd love to hear you talk about sustainable public health funding.

HARRIS: 

Public health funding has got to be sustainable. We're used to this boom and bust cycle where we see cuts and we lose staff, and we see programs that become really much smaller or have much narrower scopes, or go away completely, sometimes, until suddenly we need them. You know, a classic example, you know, we've always seen in our disease control area is in tuberculosis control. You know, if you have lots of TB cases in your jurisdiction, suddenly you find there's a lot of funding available, and then when you do a really good job of controlling those cases, the funding goes away, and your ability to prevent new cases is weakened as well. And that's just one of these counterintuitive cycles we've always dealt with. The same is true for really all the public health writ large. About 15 years ago, our department was around 60% larger than it was at the time that COVID started, but just through funding cuts with attrition of positions that we weren't able to fill, after people departed with some layoffs over, you know, a decade or so leading up to COVID, we got down to really a bare bones health department. As I mentioned, not even county health departments in every county, now with the funding that has come through because of the pandemic, and in particular because of PHIG, we are staffing up in a way that we think will allow us to do a lot of those duties that we just weren't doing very well prior to the pandemic. If this funding is not sustainable, you know, we're just- kick the can down the road a little bit, we're going to be back in the same position again. I will say PHIG has flexibility in its funding as well. That has really been helpful and useful. That's allowed us to sort of cross-cut in the way that we fund various people and let them work in various programs. PHIG has just been tremendously helpful, and it is really vital that it continue for state and territorial health departments.

JOHNSON: 

Dr. Harris, thank you for taking the time to join the newscast and I speak for everyone when I say we're looking forward to seeing what you do during your presidency over the next year. We'll see you soon.

HARRIS: 

Thank you very much. I'm very honored and very excited.

JOHNSON: 

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