Recently, Heluna Health’s Center for Outbreak Preparedness Insights was featured on Yahoo Finance. The story announced the release of Heluna Health’s Local Public Health Resources Index (LPHRI), a novel tool designed to measure and compare essential public health resources at the local level.
The article features Heluna Health’s President and CEO, Blayne Cutler, MD, PhD, and the organization’s Director of Research and Evaluation, and author of the index, Jo Kay Ghosh, PhD, MPH, who speak to the insights the LPHRI provides into the capacity for local preparedness, which is crucial in detecting and responding to health threats.
“Local health departments are on the front lines of public health response, often facing the first impacts of an outbreak or other public health crises,” said Cutler. “Effective response relies on adequate resources, which can vary significantly by county and public health jurisdiction. The LPHRI offers a systematic way to assess these variations and address community needs.”
The LPHRI assesses preparedness in four key domains: public health workforce; clinical lab and pharmacy workforce; public health expenditures; and wastewater surveillance. Ghosh added that there is a wide range of per capita expenditures within each state across these domains, highlighting the importance of the data provided by the tool.
“The LPHRI allows users to explore specific indicators within these four key domains, from epidemiology staffing levels to adoption rates of wastewater surveillance technologies,” Ghosh said. “By making such data accessible, the index provides public health leaders with comparative insights that can guide planning, resource allocation and emergency preparedness strategies.”
Click here to read the full article on Yahoo Finance.
