882: Harris Testifies on Hill; 2025 TFAH Report

JANSON SILVERS: 

This is the award winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Thursday, April 10, 2025. I'm Janson Silvers. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

SCOTT HARRIS: 

Thank you very much. Good morning, Ranking Member DeLauro, Congresswoman  Letlow. Thank you so much for having me.

SILVERS: 

ASTHO President and Alabama State Health Officer, Dr. Scott Harris, testified in front of the House Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, yesterday. Harris spent much of his testimony advocating for continued funding of State and Territorial Health Departments.

HARRIS: 

We're a non-partisan organization, but although we have members representing red ,and blue, and purple jurisdictions, we're actually all united in believing that we need sustained and flexible public health funding in order to keep our country safe and healthy.

SILVERS: 

Harris spoke about the multiple public health crises that ASTHO members continue to face.

HARRIS: 

We often say to people, "Public health may well have saved your life today, but you probably just didn't know it." The public health officials in each one of your states are working every day on many important things, like measles, rural hospital closures, opioids, mental health crises.

SILVERS: 

Harris also raised the red flag that recent funding changes impede public health preparedness.

HARRIS: 

[...] this work, we were all very shocked recently to learn overnight, we lost $11 billion in federal funding without any warning at all. These are funds that had already been appropriated by Congress. They had been approved by federal agencies for us to spend. They weren't just COVID dollars. They were approved to be used for many other things, such as measles, testing, bioterrorism threat preparedness, protecting communities, supporting our local hospitals.

SILVERS: 

We have a link to Harris' full testimony in the show notes and we will also bring you more from his testimony in tomorrow's episode of this newscast.

Emi Chutaro, the Executive Director of the Pacific Island Health Officers Association, or PHOA for short, also recently spoke with leadership on Capitol Hill about some of the issues she is seeing firsthand.

EMI CHUTARO: 

Health system strengthening, you know, looking at addressing some of the infrastructure issues of our hospitals, you know, in the islands, looking to doing some trainings, you know, for physicians, for example. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities that we sort of put on the table that was really well-received, I think.

SILVERS: 

Chutaro and other representatives from the island territories made the long flight to D.C. recently for the ASTHO Spring Leadership Meetings [Forum].

Also, Trust for America's Health has released its 2025 report, "Ready or Not 2025: Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism." Dr. J. Nadine Gracia says the report is always important, but particularly this year.

NADINE GRACIA:

The significance of this year's report is it's coming at a critical time where we're seeing a surge in measles outbreaks, the bird flu outbreak, increases in weather-related emergencies and disasters, and other types of crises.

SILVERS: 

Gracia says the report is aimed at leaders from the top down.

GRACIA: 

The report gives policymakers at all levels — federal, state, and local, as well as health officials and other sector leaders — important benchmarks, as well as actionable data about how to determine how best to improve emergency preparedness in their states.

SILVERS: 

The report dives deep into a number of topics, but Gracia says it all begins with investment.

GRACIA: 

What the nation must do is sustain and have stable, sufficient funding for public health and prevention. And it's not to wait until the emergency happens to invest in public health and prevention. We need to sustain that funding to assure that we can save lives in times of emergency and improve health overall for the nation.

SILVERS: 

The full report is out now. Use the link in the show notes to learn more.

Finally, if you ever need help with a specific topic or initiative, make sure you take a look at ASHTHO's Evidence-Based Technical Packages. These packages unite interventions for greater impact on public health challenges. The included topics cover the most important and trending topics in public health. So, use the link in the show notes to read them.

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.