1183: Five Years of Public Health: The Stories That Shaped Our Journey

JOHN SHEEHAN: 

This is Public Health Review Morning Edition for Monday, August 10, 2026. I'm John Sheehan for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and today we celebrate five years and nearly 1,200 episodes of the podcast. We've spoken with state health officials across the country, the U.S. territories and freely associated states, federal leadership, members of the media, and countless others. In today's special episode, you'll hear clips from shows covering many of the nation's most pivotal public health moments over the last half decade. We'll hear about COVID-19, Mpox, rural health, the intersection of policy and public health, and much more. Let's start in 2021, when former ASTHO chief medical officer Dr. Marcus Plescia described the COVID-19 Omicron outbreak.

 

MARCUS PLESCIA: 

I think that we're trying to decide what do we do next and what do we need to do to prepare for whatever might come. The big challenge for everybody is there's a lot of uncertainty about what this variant really does mean. I mean, there are things about the variant that are concerning that could lead to some very difficult situations for us in our fight against the COVID pandemic. But it's not clear how much of those are going to be borne out.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And then there was this moment, also in 2021, when ASTHO member and commissioner of the New York Department of Public Health, Dr. James McDonald, shared more on New York's mpox response.

 

JAMES MCDONALD: 

One of the things we have to keep in mind is, although that's what we're seeing, really everyone's at risk, and this is where everyone needs to be aware of monkeypox and understand how it's transmitted. Again, spread by close contact, spread mainly by touch, but there is that respiratory component as well. And I just think it's important for everyone to be thoughtful about how we're going to approach this. One of the things we we've been talking, you know, about is like we want to make sure that the vaccine distribution reflects the case distribution, because it's important to do that. That's part of why we work with local health departments. We want to optimize our vaccine distribution at those at highest risk, and same with optimizing treatment.

 

SHEEHAN: 

In early 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter Julie Wenau investigated the fentanyl crisis.

 

JULIE WENAU: 

Fentanyl not only could show up, you know, in one portion of a pill, but it also might not be something that your drug dealer knows is in their drugs. You don't know if they're testing it. You don't know if they've tested that part of the pill. You don't know at what point along the supply chain, you know, the fentanyl could have ended up in those drugs.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And a little later, ASTHO member Justa Encarnacion, health commissioner and chief public health officer for the U.S. Virgin Islands, discussed her team's agenda for life after the pandemic.

 

JUSTA ENCARNACION:

As the Commissioner of Health, it gives me that opportunity to not just be the Commissioner of Health, but to link healthcare to other agencies as well, Human Services, the federally qualified health centers to other departments within labor is and, in terms of workforce development, how do we come together and actually have that conversation that it actually benefits our healthcare system within the territory? One of the other reimbursements that we're looking at is our TEFRA reimbursement for both hospitals because we have not had a change for many years, close to 20 years, and so now that we’re in St. Croix, that we have a new build looking forward to as well as in St. Thomas, but the temporary structure may allow us to now rebase. And so that would allow more funding to come for the hospitals, so we need the same thing to occur in St. Thomas as well, and until that happens, then there's always that potential for decreased access to care.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And ASTHO member and the public health administrator for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, Elke Shaw-Tulloch, shared her state's efforts to improve rural health.

 

ELKE SHAW-TULLOCH: 

An example might be if you invest $100,000 in an urban public health district, you can reach many people with that $100,000. But if you have only that same amount for a rural public health area or district, they have to travel long distances and might only be able to provide services to just a few people. Also, there's less local-level staff, maybe, in those communities that have grant writing experience, making it very challenging for some of those local communities to apply for and be awarded funds. We feel it's really important to develop strong relationships with our local partners and organizations that serve our local communities. And part of developing these relationships is to really listen to what communities need. It's relatively easy to look at our community data that we have, but that only tells part of the story about local communities, especially in rural communities. There are also social norms, culture, perceptions, and local priorities that need to be considered.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And toward the end of 2023, former CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen discussed data sharing in Wisconsin.

 

MANDY COHEN: 

We need data to flow quickly between public health and healthcare, between states and CDC, and so that is my the thing I think we need to focus on as we are building this infrastructure. And again, it is the thing that powers us to be that integrated system that we need to be to protect health.

 

SHEEHAN: 

In mid-2024, Jim Jellison, Vice President of Technology, Strategy and Innovation with the National Network of Public Health Institutes, touched on tribal data sovereignty.

 

JIM JELLISON: 

A nuance with the Tribal Implementation Center is that it will engage tribes and tribal public health authorities directly to chart a strategic direction for tribal public health data modernization. In many cases, public health agencies have made tremendous improvements with their data systems. And in some cases, that's resulted in having more data than they can, you know, handle, perhaps, or needing assistance to kind of manage and parse and understand this deluge of data that they might be getting from electronic health record systems or laboratory information systems.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And later that year, former ASTHO president and commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, Steven Stack, gave updates on investments from the Public Health Infrastructure Grant in Kentucky.

 

STEVEN STACK: 

The CDC through the Public Health Infrastructure Grant has been really invaluable to our work at the Kentucky Department for Public Health, and that extends to our engagement with the Kentucky State University. So, we have worked to create pipeline programs that reach down all the way to high school through college and then all the way through the postgraduate phase to make sure that people are aware of opportunities for careers in public health and that they have pathways that they can pursue to explore and then hopefully enter into those careers. We sadly as a nation underinvested in our public health workforce for far too long, and I think when we entered COVID, we were really in distress not just because of the magnitude of COVID, but because there was such a long period of degradation in investing in the education, the training, the compensation, and other things that are necessary to retain a talented workforce. The PHIG grant has given us resources to address some of those problems. So, we have tuition assistance programs for current employees, we have subscribed to Coursera, which is an online on-demand learning platform, we also have invested in our employees by providing retention payments on a quarterly basis. These things have had incredible impacts.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Last year, Katelyn Jetelina, founder and CEO of Your Local Epidemiologist, discussed the importance of storytelling in public health.

 

KATELYN JETELINA: 

Storytelling is a huge way to make those invisible things visible, as well as always grounding communication and engagement in centering the patient or centering that person rather than the institution or more of the ivory towers. I think a lot of it's also about meeting people where they are at. We have to realize and recognize that achieving public health goals depends on the sustained and constructive engagement between public health and political systems. And so, I say lean into this, right? Lean into this with our communication. It comes down to the words and the topics we choose to talk about.

 

SHEEHAN: 

Our view from Washington D.C. segment has provided consistent insights from Capitol Hill. In this clip, we hear from ASTHO's vice president of government affairs, Jeffrey Ekoma, on the 2025 government shutdown.

 

JEFFREY EKOMA: 

Yeah, it's a little bit of a mixed bag. I mean, I think the Senate, you know, they've indicated that they will continue to vote on the House-passed measure that seeks to extend funding for the government through November 21, and also a separate bill proposed by minority leadership in the House and Senate that would extend funding through October 31. There are also ongoing discussions on whether the Senate will continue to vote on these bills through the weekend. However, it does seem like concerns related to enhanced ACA premium tax credits will continue to impact discussions, and there really is an expectation that discussions will continue, like I said, through the weekend. But things are moving fast, but also moving slow at the same time. But as always, we will continue to track and update members as things develop.

 

SHEEHAN: 

And just this year, ASTHO CEO Dr. Joseph Kanter reflected on National Public Health Week and the significance of invisible public health wins.

 

JOSEPH KANTER: 

National Public Health Week is one of my favorite weeks of the year, particularly because it's an opportunity to take a step back and recognize the value of public health in itself, and the importance and worth of individuals who spend their careers working in public health. And as we talk a lot about in this sector, we are victim often to the fact that in public health, our successes are often invisible, and our failures are quite public. But when your successes are invisible or confidential sometimes, it may be hard to express to the public what you're doing. You know, it's hard for the public to understand what public health is, why it's important, and that's not a particularly motivating factor for folks within public health. It can be disheartening. It can lead to burnout. So, it's important to me to make sure that we take a step back every now and then and reflect on why public health is important, and particularly how the work of public health practitioners, whether you're in a governmental agency or not, are important, and that work is leading to improving people's lives. In many cases, saving lives. To do that, we've got to continue to tell stories about how public health improves people's everyday lives, whether they know it or not.

 

SHEEHAN: 

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