Dr. Puthiery Va, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, explains how PHIG has helped Maine create a new Office of Violence Prevention in the latest PHIG Impact Report.
Dr. Puthiery Va, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, explains how PHIG has helped Maine create a new Office of Violence Prevention in the latest PHIG Impact Report.
JANSON SILVERS:
This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, March 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 hearing from Dr. Puthiery Va, an ASTHO member and the director of the Maine CDC.
Dr. Va, how important has the Public Health Infrastructure Grant been to you and your team in Maine?
PUTHIERY VA:
You know, PHIG has been so critical for rebuilding Maine's Public Health Infrastructure. And I say that because prior to this opportunity going into the pandemic, our Maine CDC had gone through a, I would say, a pretty dramatic downsizing, and the pandemic taught us that a lot of this work was really relying on the work of those at local public health, at the teams on the ground. And so in 2022 when there was this opportunity to have funding, to be able to support that opportunity to build back up, we were really grateful for it. And what I mean by that is that there's no space or aspect or division or program that hasn't been touched by PHIG at the Maine CDC. In terms of staffing, we were able to use PHIG funds to rebuild our public health in those critical positions, for example, to support public health nursing, to support our local health officers, public health educators at the ground level, at our public health districts, we were able to bring on toxicologists to handle PFAs work. So really, across our agency, like I said, every single division we were able to build back up. In addition to that, we were also using PHIG funds to modernize our systems. Our public health nurses were really critical at the end of this restructuring or downsizing, pre-pandemic. I think we were down to a handful of public health nurses, maybe 10 to 13 across the state. It was not a lot, right? And now we are fully-staffed, and what we've done is our public health nursing is, you know, they do maternal/child health visits. They are integral in our school-based health centers, yet their system was really old, so what we did was we used fixed funds to bring on modern electronic health records, so now they're able to track and record the work that they do, but also communicate in ways that are more efficient with our healthcare systems, such as our school-based health centers.
SILVERS:
From your perspective, what are some of those lessons learned from the grant?
VA:
I focused often on the local work and how, you know, with PHIG funds, we really did use these funds to build back up, yes, Maine CDC, for the state, but we also used it to build up local public health teams on the ground, including to our, you know, Bangor Public Health to Portland Public Health, and I mentioned our public health district units. That's how public health is delivered in Maine, and those services are delivered to community members. And I emphasize that, because when something happens, when there is a, doesn't matter what the hazard is, right? Yes, it could be COVID, it could be, you know, flu, but it could be severe storms, which we've had to deal with. It was those local public health teams that were responding and working with the response to really deliver care and services. So to me, when I think about PHIG as a federal funding source, it's a way to make us stronger at the local level, so that we are able to be more resilient, more capable, to be able to serve our people.
SILVERS:
And I wanted to ask about a new office your state is creating, an Office of Violence Prevention that actually stems from a tragedy in Maine. Can you tell me about the creation of that and how PHIG is addressing this?
VA:
We had a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine in October of 2023 and from that tragedy, I think what became very apparent across Maine, across our leadership, was, you know, how do we prevent this? What can we do better here in the space of public health? And what was born out of that was the Office of Violence Prevention, and this office will oversee prevention work and data to support that work across the state. So, it's meant to really focus. There's three aspects. Actually, one aspect is the data hub itself. How do we work across the sectors to centralize data so that we can understand what's happening on the ground, and we can use that information to really transform policy actions and shape decision-making. When I say that, I mean working with the Department of Public Safety, working with our officers on the ground, working with community organizations on the ground. How do we work with our Office of Behavioral Health? So you see, like when you talk about violence prevention, it touches in different sectors, and we have to be intentional about it. And how do we centralize that information? Because that information probably already exists. So, creating this data hub to guide actions, shape actions and form actions. The second piece of this is to really take this as an opportunity to emphasize those upstream factors, the shared risk and protective factors that you know, many public health professionals talk about. This means, like, how do we create a safer, harmonious community on the ground to protect families and kids and communities? What does that really mean? And it goes back to the basics, and so I do think this is an opportunity to sort of double down on those efforts and to bring resources and attention there. Shared risk factors, How do we tackle that? How do we mitigate the harms as much as possible, reduce those risk factors? But then there's those protective factors. Let's go ahead and double down on that. Let's amp that up if we can, how do we create opportunities to connect? How do we make sure that every child has an adult that they can connect with, that they feel that they can trust? Those are things that we really hope to really bring into the public sphere and show how this prevents violence, but in a very prevention, upstream type of way.
SILVERS:
Some incredible and timely work being done. Thanks again for the time, Dr. Va.
For more information about the Public Health Infrastructure Grant and to learn more about the work that's underway, you can 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.
