By Amir Mohammad
Public Health
Dr. Amir Mohammad
When someone asks me what the functions of a local public health department are, I inform them that we are responsible for providing 10 essential public health services, also known as EPHS.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the EPHS is a well-recognized framework, released in 1994, for carrying out the mission of public health.
This EPHS framework was revised on Sept. 9, 2020 after a collaborative effort between the Public Health National Center for Innovations and the de Beaumont Foundation, which convened a task force of public health experts, leaders and practitioners as well as experts from federal agencies, including the CDC.
The 10 essential public health services provide a framework for public health to protect and promote the health of all people in all communities. They are:
- Assess and monitor population health status, factors that influence health and community needs and assets.
- Investigate, diagnose and address health problems and hazards affecting the population.
- Communicate effectively to inform and educate people about health, factors that influence it and how to improve it.
- Strengthen, support and mobilize communities and partnerships to improve health.
- Create, champion and implement policies, plans and laws that impact health.
- Utilize legal and regulatory actions designed to improve and protect the public’s health.
- Assure an effective system that enables equitable access to the individual services and care needed to be healthy.
- Build and support a diverse and skilled public health workforce.
- Improve and innovate public health functions through ongoing evaluation, research and continuous quality improvement.
- Build and maintain a strong organizational infrastructure for public health.
In this column, I want to explain the first item and inform our residents how we assess and monitor population health status, factors that influence health and community needs and assets.
We routinely get notification from the Connecticut Department of Public Health about all the reportable diseases and illnesses that involves demographic information so we can conduct our disease surveillance. This is important to ensure that our residents are receiving appropriate and timely care.
My team is currently working to develop a community health assessment tool to identify key health needs and issues through systematic, comprehensive data collection and analysis.
These findings will help us understand the community’s health status, their needs based on the response to the questionnaires, and to develop strategies.
By collecting this information, we would be able to determine the root causes of health disparities. We plan to use innovative technologies, tools and forum to engage our community members and subject matter experts so we can share this information with our key stakeholders.
Stay tuned, as my team will be reaching out to you to collect this valuable information.
Dr. Amir Mohammad is the director of public health for the town of Orange.