HHS earmarks $80M from ARP for public health IT and better COVID-19 data collection
The effort is part of a broader push to address health and socioeconomic inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
Photo: Marko Geber/Getty Images
As part of the American Rescue Plan, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is establishing an $80 million Public Health Informatics and Technology Workforce Development Program – dubbed the PHIT Workforce Program – in an effort to strengthen U.S. public health informatics and data science.
As part of the launch, ONC has invited colleges and universities to apply for funding through a consortium that will develop the curriculum, recruit and train participants, secure paid internship opportunities and assist in career placement at public health agencies, public health-focused non-profits or public health-focused private sector or clinical settings.
The focus will be on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs).
WHAT'S THE IMPACT
The effort is part of a broader Biden administration effort to address health and socioeconomic inequities that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic – and to better prepare the healthcare system for the next public health emergency.
At issue, said HHS, is that the pandemic has exposed gaps in public health reporting and data analysis, particularly around race and ethnicity-specific data. Some of these gaps can be attributed to limited technological infrastructure and chronic underfunding of the staff needed to support public health data reporting at the state and local levels, the agency said.
HHS expects that federal efforts to promote equity in the COVID-19 response, as well as future public health responses, will be improved by robust data collection and reporting around infection, hospitalization and mortality rates, as well as underlying health and social vulnerabilities, that are disaggregated by race and ethnicity, age, gender and other variables.
The PHIT Workforce Program aims to train more than 4,000 people over a four-year period through an interdisciplinary approach in public health informatics and technology. Under the program, ONC will award up to $75 million to cooperative agreement recipients and use the remaining $5 million to support the program's overall administration.
Award recipients will need to ensure their training, certificate, degree and placement programs are sustainable to create a continuous pipeline of public health information technology professionals.
THE LARGER TREND
All of this grew out of President Biden's Executive Order on Ensuring a Sustainable Public Health Workforce for COVID-19 and Other Biological Threats. The order calls for creating and sustaining a public health workforce capable of adequately, and equitably, performing community-based testing to enable the U.S. to better respond to future pandemics and other biological threats.
The funding also supports Biden's stated goal to hire public health workers from hard-hit and high-risk communities.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com
