Podcast From Washington: NACCHO Talks Alarming Rise in Syphilis Cases and Local Health Departments Work to Improve Public Health Infrastructure

The NACCHO Podcast Series

On this week's podcast, the National Association of County and City Health Officials' Victoria Van de Vate, Director of Government Affiars, and Lauren Mastroberardino, Government Affairs Senior Specialist, provided an update on the new "laddered" Continuing Resolution, which created two funding deadlines in early 2024 and avoided an end-of-year government shutdown. They gave an analysis on the House Labor-HHS bill. Also, Mastroberardino and Van de Vate discussed NACCHO's recent response to an RFI from Senator Bill Cassidy on modernizing the CDC as well as a letter that NACCHO sent to the White House Drug Shortage Task Force urging them to prioritize the Bicillin L-A shortage, which is the only treatement available to pregnant individuals with syphilis.

Later in the program (6:08), NACCHO Senior Program Analyst Bianca Lawrence spoke with Susan Tilgner, Executive Director at Ohio Public Health Partnership, and Belinda Leslie, an Administrator with the Portsmouth City Health Department in Portsmouth, Ohio, who are using performance improvement to build the ability of local health departments to improve the quality of their operations and programming and make sure that they meet national public health standards. Ohio Public Health Partnership has participated in the Statewide Association Performance Improvement Training and Technical Assistance Support Initiative to provide tailored accreditation support to local health departments in Ohio, such as Portsmouth City, through their Accreditation Learning Community. Accreditation, like many performance improvement programs, assist local governmental public health in improving their organizational infrastructure so that they can better support all people in their community to live their healthiest lives. Tilgner and Leslie discuss the unique opportunity provided by the Accreditation Learning Community to develop meaningful performance metrics and network with local health department peers in Ohio to learn best practices for accreditation and performance improvement.