845: The Multiple Uses of PHIG

JANSON SILVERS: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, February 18, 2025. I'm Janson Silvers. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Today, we 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. This morning, we are joined by ASTHO member, Dr. Laura Herrera Scott, the secretary of health for the Maryland Department of Health.

Dr. Scott, we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us this morning. To kick us off, I know your team has used PHIG in a myriad of ways. Can you tell us more about that?

LAURA HERRERA SCOTT: 

So, we've leveraged PHIG across the agency to enhance capabilities in multiple disciplines and administration. So, we didn't limit it just in public health, per se. So, it's been leveraged in human resources and procurement, legal support, environmental health, infectious disease, injury prevention, and several others. So, we've used it agency-wide. It's also supported critical performance management as well as continuous quality improvement infrastructure, and just this month, we used it as part of our accreditation process, and we are happy to say that we were reaccredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board.

SILVERS: 

Terrific job on that reaccreditation. I know that takes a lot of work. Were there any specific projects with PHIG that you're particularly proud of?

HERRERA SCOTT: 

We've also used it to partner on innovative workforce partnerships, more recently, with two of our HBCUs, one of which is a certificate program with Bowie State University where our employees can pursue graduate-level certificates in public health informatics and project management. And you know, those are two areas in the work as we think about data modernization, which I'll get to in a minute, that are highly-skilled individuals that are needed in an agency like ours. So, this ensures our own employees have the opportunity to upskill and ready to take on emerging challenges, and that's not a skill set we've been able to provide before. We've also partnered with Morgan State and the Department of Labor. So again, it's not only our agency, but working with another agency to launch a new registered apprenticeship program for environmental health specialists, which is a critical need in the state. It's also using the dollars to work with two HBCUs, and in the latter case, partnering with another agency to also build critical infrastructure for the state. And in the first case, like I said, with the graduate-level certificate in informatics and project management, that's really been helping us with data modernization and working with our state-designated health information exchange, which is called CRISP, or the Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients. And we are having data enhancement processes with our state lab, especially around aligned disease gonorrhea and chlamydia reporting, we also use their matching information, and that was not previously available, especially around investigations for public health surveillance. So, it's really, really enabled us to do things we couldn't do before.

SILVERS: 

Your team has also done a lot regarding essential public health services. Are there any examples that you can share?

HERRERA SCOTT: 

You know, just thinking about the last certificate program that I mentioned around the partnership with Morgan State, having environmental health specialists at the local health department level, that is an essential health services. Once we get out of urban Maryland, we're dealing with septic systems, and wells, and things like that, and without invent- environmental health specialists at the local level, we can't successfully run and license the local communities, and we didn't have enough of that workforce locally, and we were really behind in some of the inspections and licensings that we had to do. And now, by able-, you know, having the PHIG grant, having this program in place, we've now been able to develop the workforce for our local health departments that now can then develop the skill set that we need to be able to provide the support locally.

SILVERS: 

Lastly, can you tell me how you use PHIG to address the needs of here and now, but also set yourself up for success in the future?

HERRERA SCOTT: 

Having a non-categorical funding, like PHIG provided, allowed us to move the resources where we most needed them for short-term, urgent health needs, while we developed that longer-term infrastructure. So, it allowed us in the short-term to fill gaps while we worked with the state, or we worked with the counties, or we worked with, quite frankly, philanthropy, or we worked with, if we were developing, or we were providing a services that was a billable service, to develop the billing infrastructure to get reimbursed for that service, so that we could become self- sustaining. So, that's what PHIG allowed us to do.

SILVERS: 

Dr. Scott, we are so thrilled to hear all the work being done in your state, and can't wait to see what you do next. Thanks for joining us.

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.