Blog

As part of our ongoing Building a Healthy Georgia campaign, this week Georgians for a Healthy Future, the Partner Up! for Public Health campaign and HealthSTAT were in Athens at the University of Georgia for The Role of Future Public Health Professionals and Public Health Policy-making.  It was a conversation all about public health—the education, training and advocacy of those in the field and how the next few years will be particularly critical in determining the future of our health care system.

Our panelists included: Dean Williams of the College of Public Health, who was recently appointed to the Board for the new Department of Public Health; Dr. Phaedra Corso, Professor and Department Head, Health Policy and Management at the College of Public Health; Charlie Hayslett of the Partner Up! campaign; Ashley Wells from the Georgia Public Health Training Center; and Michelle Putnam, Executive Director of HealthSTAT.  All panelists shared great information about our state’s health status, where we can improve, what opportunities are available through the Affordable Care Act, and described the critical role of advocacy in shaping our state’s health priorities.  You can access the panelists’ presentations here.

With the newly created Department of Public Health, upcoming changes to the Medicaid program, and our consistently low rankings on health outcomes, there has never been a more important time to be involved in public health.  If you are interested in learning more ways to get involved, contact us at aptashkin@healthyfuturega.org.

For more on this topic,  the Foothills AHEC (Area Health Education Center) is holding a distance learning event (online), “The State of the Public Health Workforce” on Tuesday, October 25th from 10:15 to 11:45 am.  There is no cost to participate but an RSVP is required.  To find out more information about the event, click here.

Keep checking our campaign page for the latest Building a Healthy Georgia events.  In the meantime, take a look at some of our pictures from last week’s event.