CDC Creates New Office of Prevention Through Health Care

By Peter Kyriacopoulos, Director of Public Policy, APHL

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently notified Scott Becker, APHL’s Executive Director, about a newly created office: the Office of Prevention Through Health Care (OPTH). This new office will enable CDC to more aggressively and effectively develop and disseminate policies that leverage the health care system to improve health through prevention. According to CDC, OPTH will coordinate health care activities across CDC programs and will lead engagement with external partners on health care issues.

There is no better way to achieve an immediate improvement in health through prevention than increased surveillance and detection of disease outbreaks. State and local laboratories performing tests of public health significance are on the frontline of this activity and are under extreme pressure to continue their exemplary performance because of the staffing reductions that have resulted from budget cuts caused by the economic downturn. Work on food safety, pandemic influenza, and other infectious diseases is imperiled because of these budget cuts.

An infusion of federal support for state and local public health workforce retention would produce an immediate high-value preventive intervention by preserving the much-needed laboratory professionals who are responsible for surveillance and detection on a daily basis. Improved surveillance and detection coupled with expedient delivery of that information through a robust laboratory informatics network would lead to a reduction in the instances of disease and reductions in the number of individuals seeking health care because of disease. It is hard to imagine a smarter engagement with the health system than by reducing the number of people it is struggling to serve. The positive implications for the payers, public and private, of this care are similarly obvious.

The corollary is also true, the path we are travelling with continued losses of state and local laboratory professionals coupled with the antiquated mechanisms for transmitting laboratory test orders and results can only lead to reduced surveillance and detection and increased incidents of disease that causes public and private payers to expend ever increasing amounts on the delivery of health care to increased numbers of people.

Public Health Preparedness Summit: Huge Success

Last month’s Public Health Preparedness Summit in Atlanta was a huge success. The Summit welcomed over 1,800 attendees and continues to provide a unique forum for multiple disciplines of public health to learn from each other how best to promote a culture of public health preparedness across the nation.

This year's Summit included Town Hall Sessions where organizations such as APHL presented on important topics including "The Wild World of Public Health Laboratories: We do More than Testing for Sexually Transmitted Diseases." This session provided attendees with an overview of public health laboratories, their role in testing for novel influenza A H1N1; detecting Salmonella typhimurium in peanut butter and identifying a nationwide outbreak; screening the nation's newborns for genetic disorders and providing continuity of operations during natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina; and working with the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to test hundreds of white powder threat letters sent to governors and embassies.

In addition to presentations on laboratory-specific activities, APHL's preparedness staff, Anthony Barkey and Sikha Singh, led a session on implementing social networking tools as tomorrow's emergency response engine for local departments of health.

One of the keynote presentations was delivered by Ana-Marie Jones, executive director of Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disaster (CARD). She emphasized the importance of simplifying messages and engaging the public as messengers. Jones encouraged public health leaders to use these tough economic times to eliminate failing programs and look at how to leverage successes of existing programs that succeed in generating measurable change.

Closing keynote speaker, Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, Director, CDC and Administrator, ATSDR, stated that preparedness is a core function for CDC. Frieden reiterated CDC's commitment to strengthen state and local preparedness to better measure, improve and monitor public health capability; strengthen technical assistance; promote collaboration and train the public health workforce.

This conference will continue be one of the few events that bring together all the major players in the preparedness community, from emergency planners and first responders to policy makers and federal agencies. The summit is quickly becoming an event known for bringing new ideas and technology to the forefront, which is a trend that will only help to strengthen the public health community.