902: Data Dashboards, Design Your Own Accreditation

SUMMER JOHNSON: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Thursday, May 8, 2025. I'm Summer Johnson. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

NATASHA BAGDASARIAN: 

I think it's a really great tool for us to tell the story of public health. I think for so long in public health, we've been a victim of our own success.

JOHNSON: 

Research shows that the role of public health departments is widely misunderstood by the public astho member, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive for the State of Michigan, shares a new tool her state is using to help shape awareness of what they do, a public health data dashboard. In the wake of COVID-19, Michigan's Public Health Advisory Council conducted interviews with community members across the state to learn what people thought of their response to the pandemic and find out what they perceived about public health.

BAGDASARIAN: 

As a result, what we're seeing and what we're hearing from folks is that the public doesn't really understand what public health does, that legislators in particular don't really know the details of public health, and many of them think that public health is Medicaid, that these two terms are almost interchangeable.

JOHNSON: 

The question was, how could public health officials better tell public health's story to policy-makers? The answer: a dashboard that visualizes key public health trends and rates the performance of Michigan's districts, allowing state legislators to search for specific metrics.

BAGDASARIAN: 

They get a report card that tells them how they're doing on a few different domains, across things like clinical care, health behavior, health outcomes, and they can see if they are close to the state average, doing better, or doing slightly worse than the state average. We've then got some really specific areas that they can do a deeper dive into, so they can see, for example, how they're doing with immunizations.

JOHNSON: 

The report card allows policy-makers to determine where to focus legislation, and the public to decide what they may want to advocate for. Bagdasarian added that they started with data that was already available and in real need of awareness. But she's already thinking about what more could be included.

BAGDASARIAN: 

We just launched six months ago, our Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, and we're really talking about and working on tackling gun violence as a public health issue, and so I'd love to see some of those statistics make their way into here. I think it's really important for folks to understand what the problems are that their communities are facing, so that they can then tackle those problems.

JOHNSON: 

You can check out Michigan's Public Health Data Dashboard yourself. Just head to the link in the show notes.

Next, the accreditation process is not something that most public health departments think about in day to day operations. ASTHO Accreditation Analyst David Stone explains why they should, and how ASTHO's Guide for Sustainable Public Health Accreditation can help.

DAVID STONE: 

So, the guide is a template for health departments to develop their own unique approach to how they achieve accreditation.

JOHNSON: 

Designed to adapt, the guide's educational framework provides a way to integrate accreditation efforts into health department staff's daily responsibilities.

STONE: 

It looks at three factors, the organizational structure, maintenance after initial accreditation, and then preparation for reaccreditation. The real purpose is to capture in one document all of the elements that should be considered when maintaining your accreditation status.

JOHNSON: 

Stone describes the guide's role in bringing leadership and staff together to talk about the importance of accreditation.

STONE: 

So, if people don't know why their department is working on accreditation, or especially if they don't see themselves as a part of it, well then, they of course, don't think about it and probably would not be involved.

JOHNSON: 

You can access the guide by using the link in the show notes.

SCOTT HARRIS:

I'm trying to make it clear to them that we're going to find a way to get the work done. You know, we care very much about protecting Alabamians' health and safety, any why we got into this work.

JOHNSON: 

That's ASTHO President and Alabama's State Health Officer, Dr. Scott Harris, who recently appeared on the 'Public Health On Call' podcast talking about keeping staff motivated and moving forward in the current environment. If you want to take a listen to that interview, we have a link right to it in the show notes.

And more news of ASTHO experts out and about, ASTHO Past President and former Director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Nirav Shah, will give the commencement address at the University of Maine at Farmington graduation that will take place this Saturday at 11 a.m. Eastern.

Also on deck today, don't forget to sign up for ASTHO's crisis communications workshop that takes place this afternoon, Thursday, May 8, and it will be hosted by ASTHO CMO Dr. Susan Kansagra. You can still sign up until 1 p.m. Eastern.

That'll do it for today. We're back tomorrow morning with more ASTHO news and information. I'm Summer Johnson, you're listening to the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition. Have a great day.