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Strengthening Public Health
In late 2002, a Foundation-sponsored poll found that three-fourths
of Americans were concerned that an emphasis on bioterrorism
would leave the public health system ill-prepared to attend
to other critical issues, such as prevention of chronic and
infectious diseases unrelated to bioterrorism. Their concerns
are justified. Not only are public health departments underfunded
and overstretched, they lack the technological resources needed
to protect effectively the health of the nation.
Eighty percent of the country’s 3,000 public health
departments lack the information infrastructure necessary
to communicate with their central state health department
or with local health care providers. During the height of
the anthrax outbreak, for instance, Connecticut’s state
lab struggled with a 25-year-old computer system. To get the
reports they needed, staff had to extract raw data three times
a day and organize it by hand. Last summer in Arkansas, state
public health officials had problems tracking an outbreak
of West Nile virus because their outdated computer system
could not communicate with other systems. The heart of the
problem is that state public health departments, which will
be on the front line in protecting the nation’s health
in the event of a bioterrorism attack or disease outbreak,
rely on a haphazard and largely outdated collection of hardware
and information software. This is why the Foundation established
the Public Health Informatics Institute in September 2002.
The $2.8-million Institute not only will help define the requirements
for next-generation public health laboratory information management
systems, but also will establish a national clearinghouse
of information technology vendors and products and develop
a process for evaluating and sharing software among states.
Investing in Future Public Health Leaders
In 2002, high school teachers throughout the country applied
for awards in the first phase of the Foundation’s $8.5-million
Young Epidemiology Scholars (YES) program to heighten awareness
of epidemiology and public health among high school students
and teachers. Epidemiology is the science of discovering causes
of illness and injury by interpreting patterns of their occurrence
in populations. Eight teachers who submitted six models for
high school epidemiology curricula were awarded a total of
$75,000. In one classroom, students will solve a plague puzzle,
design a disease museum and create a public information campaign
using Web-based applications and research. Another curriculum
involves students investigating the cause, treatment, control
and prevention of type 2 diabetes. The first YES competition
for students, with scholarships totaling up to $465,000 annually,
will take place in the 2003–2004 school year.
In addition to nurturing future leaders at the high school
level, the Foundation is helping build the nation’s capacity
for public health research, leadership and action through
the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program.
The need for a training program that approaches population
health issues broadly became more obvious with the release
of a November 2002 Institute of Medicine report, Who Will
Keep the Public Healthy? Educating Public Health Professionals
for the 21st Century. The report notes that, of the more
than 450,000 public health workers in the United States, only
a fraction receive formal public health training. The report
recommends that the training of public health professionals
take an ecological approach, with graduate-level programs
that include eight content areas: informatics, genomics, communication,
cultural competence, community-based participatory research,
global health, policy and law, and public health ethics. Health
& Society Scholars selected six program sites
in 2002: Columbia University; Harvard University; University
of California, San Francisco; University of Michigan; University
of Pennsylvania; and University of Wisconsin. The first class
of 18 scholars for this intensive two-year fellowship program
will be named in 2003.
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