The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) within HHS https://healthit.gov, is establishing an $80 million Public Health Informatics & Technology Workforce Development Program ( PHIT Workforce Program) at minority serving institutions and other colleges and universities.
COVID-19 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.
Federal efforts to center equity in the COVID-19 response and for future public health responses will be improved by robust data collection and reporting. This would include reporting on infections, hospitalizations and mortality rates, as well as reporting underlying health and social vulnerabilities that is disaggregated by race and ethnicity, age, gender, and other key variables.
ONC is inviting colleges and universities to apply for funding. The funding will be used to strengthen, expand training, certification, and degree programs in public health informatics and data science at minority serving institutions and other colleges and universities.
The funding needs to be applied through a consortium that will develop the curriculum by working in conjunction with local and state public health departments, community based organizations, and others with experience dealing with the most pressing and critical challenges in public health informatics and technology.
The goal is to 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 PHIT Workforce Program will train more than 4,000 individuals 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 for a four year period of performance. Individual awards will not exceed $10 million. The remaining $5 million will be used to support the program’s overall administration. ONC will fund up to 30 cooperative agreement awards for a four year period of performance.
According to Micky Tripathi, PhD, National Coordinator for HIT, “This new funding will help support the efforts of minority serving institutions and other colleges and universities across the U.S to educate and launch individuals into public health careers.”
The Funding Notice titled Public Health Informatics & Technology Workforce Development Program at https://healthit.gov/topic/onc-funding-opportunities/funding-announcements was posted on June 17, 2021.