1211: Building Data Science Skills to Modernize Public Health

JOHN SHEEHAN: 

This is Public Health Review Morning Edition for Wednesday, September 23, 2026. I'm John Sheehan with news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

 

Data modernization is helping public health agencies strengthen their systems, improve data analysis, and respond more quickly to emerging health threats. Colin Gerber, senior program analyst at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists discusses the Data Science Team Training Program, an initiative that helps public health staff build data science skills while working on projects that address their agency's priorities.

 

COLIN GERBER: 

Data Science Team Training Program, or DSTT for short, is a team-based, training-in-place program that focuses on helping public health staff in state, tribal, local, territorial health departments really grow their skills in data science. Mostly, this is project based at a particular agency, though sometimes a DSTT team is going to be made up of a couple different agencies collaborating together on some sort of data modernization project that advances their priorities or their goals. In addition to a project, the other component of the program are a training stipend for all the participants, a Coursera license with access to a curated data science library, a subject matter expert coach who meets with them monthly, in addition to monthly live workshops, and the ability to join just an online community of practice with the other teams, so that everybody has the chance to meet and learn from each other and connect together over their work.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And can you describe and kind of connect the dots for us how the DSTT fits into the broader initiative of data modernization?

 

GERBER: 

Yeah, well, data modernization, right, is all about trying to make public health faster, right? We learned kind of in real-time, during the COVID pandemic, all the challenges of our outdated systems and got to see where the weak spots are, and DMI, data modernization initiative, is all about you know how can we patch over those weaknesses, make those stronger. However, you know a lot of the funding in DMI is very prescribed. You know it's for this, that, or the other priority. One of the beautiful parts of DSTT is how flexible the program really is for agencies. You know, not only do we accept teams that have projects that are very foundational. For example, and I might talk about this a little bit more later. We had a tribal health department building a very basic disease surveillance system effectively from scratch. They might also be more innovative projects, you know, developing models to predict overdose hotspots in a particular county or something along those lines. The program is really open to all levels of data science ability from, you know, from agencies from participants. You know, we get small health departments, huge health departments, and all points in between. But ultimately, you know, all of this fits into the broader DMI priorities. But DSTT really gives the flexibility to make things happen that you know really meets an agency's needs wherever they're at in their own data modernization journey, right? Even more than any particular software license or any particular server room or anything like that, one of the best resources that we have in public health are the people who are already there and doing the work, and the staff, you know, the dedicated staff that we have in public health departments. And DSTT is all about leveling them up and giving them the skills that they need to push data modernization forward.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And why is the program- why could it be a particular benefit to tribal nations?

 

GERBER: 

Yeah, good question. So prior to coming on with CSTE about five years ago, I was a practicing tribal epidemiologist with one of the tribal epidemiology centers, or TECs for short, and time and time again, we ran into the challenge of how rare it is to get professional development funds. You know, epidemiologists or public health officers or community health workers, anybody who's doing public health work at a tribal health department or a tech, they frequently have to wear, you know, all the different hats because they don't have as many resources as some of their larger state health department colleagues, and to have a program that says, "Hey, not only do you can you like stay in your position at your agency and grow your skill set, you know, get additional certifications, but we want to support whatever your priority is, whatever stands out as being necessary for your needs, and give you that flexibility. Oftentimes, folks who you know, I'm painting with a broad brush here, but oftentimes, folks working at tribal health departments, you know, if they want to get additional certifications, it means that they have to, you know, they might have to travel far away. They have to leave their communities. They might have to they have to leave their agencies for some amount of time in order to gain those additional certifications and get that additional training, whereas this can be done, you know, in place while they're still there.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Wow! What about some other examples of past projects of success stories?

 

GERBER: 

Yeah, yeah. Well, so I mentioned earlier we had one tribal nation; they had a help center on their reservation that had been empowered by their tribal council to act as a health authority, and knew anecdotally that a lot of COVID cases were happening, you know, in their community among their community members, and as a consequence, you know, Long COVID and all of its attendant symptoms and problems were really impacting the community. But this tribe couldn't get data from the state that was being generated in their clinic and flowing, you know, up the pipeline to the state health department, and so they used DSTT to effectively build a disease surveillance system from scratch. So figuring out how can we pipe, you know, electronic case record data from our health center via our code and a couple other steps into a usable Excel flat file that our health department can respond to, so you know something that feels very you might feel very basic to some health departments, but is absolutely critical if you're trying to think about how do we best take care of our community members, how do we best take care of our elders, how do we best take care of you know the people who are sick in a small community when we know, but we don't officially know. You know who may or may not be sick. Another example, and this one comes from Los Angeles County. You know they created an early alert and monitoring system for hospitals that might be at risk of exceeding their surge capacity. This enabled, you know, would help guide rapid rollout of emergency resources to hospitals that might be disproportionately impacted. This also used a combination of SAS, Python, data visualization software, right? Trying to weave together all these different threads and all these different skills in order to generate functional data and really create useful resources for those health departments to respond better and quicker in more real time.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Wow, those are two very different use cases, but you know that common thread of look, we have this data, we just need to make these two systems talk to each other. You know what can we do about it? That thread runs through.

 

GERBER: 

Absolutely, and I think it really highlights how often, sometimes, it doesn't take much, right? It just mean it's just a little bit of extra funding, a little bit of extra cash in the right place at the right time to support the people who have the creativity to tie those things together.

 

SHEEHAN: 

What can other agencies do to apply or to learn more? How can they take advantage?

 

GERBER: 

Yeah, I mean, if you just Google CSTE DSTT, lots of acronyms there. It'll be the first one that pops up, and applications are open right now until September 25, I believe. Generally speaking, you need three to five people who will be working on the project, at least one of whom ought to be fulfilling the role of an epidemiologist. That doesn't need to be their job title, because we know that you know lots of people do epi work without being epidemiologists themselves, but you do need to have some kind of project that you're going to propose, along with a letter of support from a supervisor or agency leadership that says, you know, yes, we know about this project. We're going to carve out the time for the team to work on this, and they're going to be supported. Generally, the team will fill out the whole application together, and then each person will have an individualized section about what is their contribution to the project. Having gone through this process with several cohorts at this point, I will say that the strongest applications tend to have very clear descriptions of the project, along with you know a clear reasoning for each team member's inclusion on the team. I mentioned earlier that sometimes we do get collaborative projects between multiple different agencies. Again, the application is pretty similar, but you might need some additional letters of support in that. Just from each of the groups that might be collaborating together on it.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Right. And probably a clear description of the solution that they're trying to find.

 

GERBER: 

Exactly, exactly.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Well, Colin Gerber, thanks so much.

 

GERBER: 

Thank you, John. It's such a pleasure to talk about this program, and yeah, I really believe fervently that this is a great tool and a great opportunity, particularly for tribal nation staff and, you know, anyone working in tribal public health. The need is there, and you know just want to make sure that more people know about this and that this opportunity is available for them.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Colin Gerber is a senior program analyst at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. Find a link to register for the Data Science Team Training Program in the show notes.

 

One of the tenets of public health is ensuring equitable access to care, meaning the services needed for someone to be healthy and well are affordable and available. ASTHO's recent analysis of state health improvement plans and strategic plans indicates that providing and maintaining adequate access to care remains a priority across states and territories. Nevertheless, gaps in access to care persist, with many communities facing health care workforce shortages or facility shortages, limiting the availability of care providers that can provide medically necessary services to those in need. Learn more about legislative action bridging public health and clinical health care at the link in the show notes.

 

State and territorial public health agencies use telehealth for a variety of reasons: to deliver clinical care to patients, provide education to patients and providers, deliver public health programming, and more. The 2026 Telehealth Needs Assessment is fielded nationally to collect information on how telehealth activities are organizationally structured and funded within a health agency, how telehealth is used, and health agency goals and technical assistance needs for telehealth. Learn more about the results of this assessment at the link in the show notes.

 

Also of note, Abraham Kulungara, ASTHO senior director of Environmental Health, was quoted in a Governing article about the lingering health effects of the 9/11 attacks. The link is in the show notes.

 

This has been Public Health Review Morning Edition. I'm John Sheehan for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.