836: Workforce Investments w/ PHIG

JANSON SILVERS: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, February 4, 2025. I'm Janson Silvers. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. This morning, we are excited to come to you with another PHIG Impact Report twice a month, we will bring you this segment that showcases the Public Health Infrastructure Grant, otherwise known as PHIG, including how your colleagues across the nation are using it and how it's impacting the U.S. public health system. Today, we speak with ASTHO President-Elect, Dr. Manisha Juthani, who currently serves as the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

Dr. Juthani, we're so happy to have you back on the newscast. Just to kick us off, what has the Public Health Infrastructure Grant meant for your department?

MANISHA JUTHANI: 

PHIG has been a transformational grant, I think, for all jurisdictions, but I can certainly say for Connecticut, we've put it to full use. So, first of all, 40% is going to our local jurisdictions. This is a requirement of the grant, but I have gone around to many of our 59 health departments and districts, and have continued to make my rounds around the state, and what I hear from people on the ground is the ways that they've been able to be innovative, to bolster their workforce, to provide training, to use it in areas that they've had specific difficulty on, to support internship programs. These are all things being done at the local level, but what I can say for the State Department is that it has really helped us thrive. Our culture of care is number one, so we've done a lot of different programming to hire people in our Office of Public Health Workforce Development. But beyond that, we've done so many things building out the pipeline of programs, whether it be starting at the high school-level, our collaboration with the community college system to be able to get public health in front of young college students and be able to potentially show them a career path and where they can go from there and building out that programming that's been rolling out, creating and building out our Public Health Training Academy with lots of different programming available online, both for our workforce and for our local health workforce. So, the options that PHIG has done for workforce has been quite expansive.

SILVERS: 

It sounds like you've used those dollars to really focus on your people. How important is that?

JUTHANI: 

I believe that by having a critical focus on workforce and our infrastructure, it has enabled us to make sure we don't put this on the sidelines. We make sure that we are investing in the development of the workforce, investing in making sure that we can evaluate how those workforce are working, and what can we do better? And how can we really make sure that we do not burn out another generation of public health employees so that we can really deal with all the public health challenges that we have every day and the new ones that come our way. So, this has really been a critical investment in making sure not only that we keep the public health workforce that we have well and able to respond, but also investing in that new generation.

SILVERS: 

But I know you aren't only focused on hiring, you're also focused on the well-being of your folks. Can you elaborate?

JUTHANI: 

I am very proud of what we've been able to see in terms of the turnaround in our workforce and engagement with feeling like they like the work they're doing, the people they're working with, their overall support. They feel supported in the work that they do. They feel that their work is meaningful. They've always known that, but they feel like others are recognizing that that is important. Yesterday, we had an agency-wide managerial retreat where we invested in the training of our managerial workforce, learning how to manage people, learning how to lead people. I used a book that Steve Stack, the commissioner from Kentucky, has used. It's called, It's Your Ship. And that book, we did a book club on that book during the retreat, so we had half the day really involving our Office of Labor Relations and HR and Attorney General's Office on a lot of employee issues, helping to give people the tools on how to manage and lead better. And then we used, too, the afternoon talking about telework and how to best do that well, and then doing a reflection on the book and doing a reflection on how this book can help all of our employees lead better going forward. And so I think even that retreat, which was organized by our Office of Workforce Development and was sponsored in part by the PHIG grant, is an investment in our workforce, and at the end of the day, the staff really felt like they wanted more training, such opportunities. And that just was very gratifying to me, that we had people engaged and active and interactive the entire day, from nine to five, where people were engaged in this investment, in their own success and in their managerial duties. And so I think that that really is an important investment in our group.

SILVERS: 

And before we go, those investments on the inside of your department are going to pay dividends to the public, but they don't always see that right away. How are you using PHIG to shine a light on public health so that they see the great work being done?

JUTHANI: 

The PHIG grant has also enabled us to help elevate and showcase and highlight all the different places that public health operates and works. So, for example, we also have a program where we work with some of our state colleges and universities, and we have a public health internship program where people are working in communities, let's say community gardening, and how that investment in locally-sourced food can be an investment in the public health of a community. Those types of programs. It's showing how public health is in every aspect of our life. And public health is really everywhere, and I think that COVID has helped elevate that, and this investment, through PHIG on the heels of COVID, in a way, has helped amplify that. Things that became evident in COVID were trying to invest and showcase public health every day as we move forward.

SILVERS: 

Tremendous job, Dr. Juthani, as always, thanks for joining us, and I'm sure we will talk soon.

For more information about the Public Health Infrastructure Grant and to learn more about the great work going on, visit the PHIG website. We have a link in the show notes.

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.