ONC allocates $80 million to Public HIT Workforce Program, COVID-19 data collection

The announcement supports the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to end pervasive health and socioeconomic disparities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, officials said

Using funding from the U.S. White House bailout plan, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) announces the creation of Public Health Informatics & amp; Technology Personnel Development Program (PHIT), aimed at strengthening public health informatics and data science in the United States.

As part of this launch, ONC is inviting colleges and universities, particularly colleges and universities for Blacks (HBCUs), tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), serving Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. Institutions (AANAPISI) and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) to apply for funding through a consortium that will develop curriculum, recruit and train participants, provide paid internship opportunities, and assist in employment with public health, public health agencies. – nonprofit organizations, the private sector, or public health-focused clinical institutions.

The PHIT Workforce Program aims to train more than 4,000 people over a four-year period using an interdisciplinary approach in public health informatics and technology. Under the PHIT Workforce Program, ONC will award up to $75 million to recipients of cooperative agreements and use the remaining $5 million to support overall program management. Federal officials said recipients of the award will need to ensure the sustainability of their training, certificate, degree and employment programs to create a continuous stream of diverse public health information technology professionals.

“The limited number of public health professionals trained in informatics and technology was one of the key challenges the country faced during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mickey Tripathi, PhD, national health information technology coordinator. “This new funding will help meet that need by supporting the efforts of minority-serving institutions and other colleges and universities across the country to train and engage people in public health careers.”

The announcement “supports the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to eradicate the pervasive health and socioeconomic disparities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and to ensure that our health system is better prepared for the next public health emergency,” according to federal health officials.

They also note that the pandemic has exposed gaps in public health reporting and data analysis, particularly with regard to race and ethnicity data. “Some of these gaps can be attributed to limited technological infrastructure and chronic underfunding of the personnel needed to support state and local public health data reporting,” they said.

Federal efforts to ensure equity in the response to COVID-19 and future public health responses “will be improved by reliably collecting and reporting infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, and key health and social vulnerabilities that are disaggregated. by race and ethnicity, age, gender and other key parameters,” the officials said.

Indeed, the crisis has shown that there is simply not enough reliable data on race and ethnicity to enable health stakeholders to understand the underlying factors that contribute to disparities. For example, according to the recently launched Health Equity Tracker, 38% of COVID-19 cases reported unknown race and ethnicity.