880: ASTHO BCAH Program, New 2025 Model of Health

JANSON SILVERS: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, April 8, 2025. I'm Janson Silvers. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

KILAH WALTERS-CLINTON: 

It is designed for middle managers within their roles in public health agencies within the government. This program provides practical tools and concepts to establish productive plans.

SILVERS: 

ASTHO's Building Capacity to Advance Health Certificate Program has helped dozens of leaders across the country. Kilah Walters-Clinton, with the Executive Office of Health and Human Services in Rhode Island tells us about her experience.

WALTERS-CLINTON: 

One of the things I really loved was being able to build relationships across the nation, as well as deepen relationships within my region. That was really, really helpful to know what our partners were doing next door in Massachusetts, whom I'd never met and never had the pleasure of being even in small, little virtual boxes. So, it brought us together in a way that was productive.

SILVERS: 

Walters-Clinton says the program uses real examples from the work she was currently doing.

WALTERS-CLINTON: 

So, you come together and you pick a different project or program that you're working on, and they help to guide you through certain steps that help you think about the system you're in, and organizational development and change management aspects and boundary spanning leadership aspects to help you move your project along.

SILVERS: 

The program used a combination of supports to ensure participants are successful.

WALTERS-CLINTON: 

And not only do you have that guide and those facilitators throughout the month, but you also have these other partners, these other thought partners that can give you different perspectives. And I think that's so beneficial, because everyone was coming from a different perspective, a different community.

SILVERS: 

More information about the Building Capacity to Advance Health Certificate Program is on ASTHO's website. There's a link in the show notes.

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps is a program at the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute, and it's released a new Model of Health 2025 report. Dr. Christine Muganda explains.

CHRISTINE MUGANDA: 

This model of health challenges us to understand that the conditions that support healthy communities, those things like safe housing, and great schools, and living wages, the presence or absence of these conditions does not just happen randomly, and we want to know why.

SILVERS: 

Muganda says the model pushes public health to think even larger than the typical social determinants of health.

MUGANDA: 

And we want to push the conversation further and call ourselves into the question of what societal structures, what laws, what policies, budgets are setting the scope, or kind of determining the realm of possibilities of what could be as we imagine healthy conditions for our communities.

SILVERS: 

Muganda believes it can help other departments see the public health connection in what they do, too.

MUGANDA: 

I hope that this model will serve as a touchstone that validates the need to have local and state health departments in the room when decisions are made about local laws, or state practices, and budgets, and other societal issues when these things are decided.

SILVERS: 

More information on the model is online now. Click the link in the show notes to learn more.

Also, there's still time to sign up for ASTHO's INSPIRE: Readiness series that begins later this month. The webinar titled, Navigating AI-Enabled Community-Inclusive Preparedness will occur on Thursday, April 17, at 2 p.m. ET. Sign up to hear from Preppr.ai, the Kansas Health Institute, and more. That link is in the show notes.

Finally, this morning, always stay up to date when you sign up for ASTHO's Public Health Weekly newsletter. It's the perfect compliment to this newscast and it's sent to your inbox every week. As always, there's a link in the show notes to sign up.

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.