The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - The People, Process, & Progress of Public Health | S4Ep18

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

In this episode, The People, Process, & Progress of Public Health, I talk about what public health is, why it matters, and why it's crucial to protect it from political whiplash, ensuring that the critical work of keeping communities healthy continues regardless of who's in office. 

Public health. It's a term we hear a lot, but especially now, as a new administration has taken office in 2025 and begins to, or already has begun, I'll say, reshape national priorities. Having worked as a public health emergency planner and coordinator at both the state and local levels, I've seen firsthand how these transitions can impact on-the-ground efforts. Often, these changes bring shifts in funding, adjustments to established protocols, and sometimes even a complete re-evaluation of public health strategies. I'll say that's not always good. Sometimes it is.

Today, I want to talk about what public health is, why it matters, and why it's crucial to protect it from political whiplash, ensuring that the critical work of keeping communities healthy continues regardless of who's in office. But before we start this briefing, let's set the ground rules. Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and let's get started with the People Process Progress Podcast. Defining public health, let's start with a simple definition. Public health is the science and art, and there is a lot of art in it, of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through organized community efforts.

So if you think about this example, clean water, safe food, vaccinations, they are all hallmarks of effective public health systems, right? It's protecting the entire population, not just individuals. And to me, an area that public health needs to grow is to get us back to holistic health, fitness, how we eat, sleep, sunshine. And I think our new Secretary of Health and Human Services is going to help us do that. And I'm also interested to see the balance of the vaccinations and those kind of things and not just basing that off the headline from CNN or Fox or somebody else trying to

go, he's going to do this and he'll never do that and all the political nonsense. But it needs to be a holistic human approach. And that's related to the seven pillars I've talked about of ownership and mindfulness and movement and boundaries and connection and sleep and faith. And that's why I've been gone. about of ownership and mindfulness and movement and boundaries and connection and sleep and faith. And that's why I've been gone. I'm working on the stability equation, seven pillars for a balanced life ebook, and then paperback book, more on that in the future. Unless we're in a pandemic that's politicized and people wear masks or you have to stay home like we did five years ago, public health impact is largely invisible, right? Precisely because it's

effective, right? We don't have to think about the thousands of lives saved by vaccine. In fact, most people don't, they're stuck on the political aspect of it, or if it works or it doesn't. And I have opinions going both ways on that, or the countless illnesses prevented by restaurant inspections. I've heard stories from my environmental health colleagues, and those are the folks that do inspections and well water and a whole mix of things. And some of the folks at restaurants are disgusting. So, and I'll touch on that here in a second, but so let me touch on some of these areas, particularly hand-washing vaccines and food safety that had a dramatic positive effect on humanity, right? Hand-washing seems simple. It's my favorite, most impactful health, public health,

healthcare thing that somebody realized we should do, right? It seems very simple, but I don't know about you. I've seen tons of folks leave either a rest stop on the highway or a restaurant and not wash their hands and they just came out of the commode and that's disgusting. So wash your hands. There's my public health message, but hand washing has dramatically reduced the spread of diseases, right? Throughout history. Additionally, for all the nurses out there, you're familiar with Florence Nightingale. And a lot of you should be familiar with the fact that we get clean sheets on a regular basis these days is attributed to her. She realized during the Crimean war, what if we got rid of all these bloody, disgusting sheets and changed them and washed them and sanitize them, right? So not only our hands, but the things we put patients on to

lay on and in our house and all those kinds of things, right? So hand washing and hygiene and sanitation, that's public health. You take advantage of it. You don't even think about it, right? Sometimes, right? The negative gets lumped into the public health system and the CDC and this, and I've been there, but think about where these things come from. Vaccines, another hot button topic, but it should depend on what vaccine you're talking about and why and all that stuff. But they are a cornerstone of public health. They 100% factually have eradicated diseases like smallpox, polio, and there are other serious illnesses that vaccines are great for.

Right? There is controversy around them. And I'll be the first to say that the flu shot every year could vary between in the teens percent of helpfulness to 60. And there's huge variability. So by and large, though, for the really serious illnesses that affect the general populace, vaccination and vaccines are safe and effective, and they've made a huge difference in the world. Food safety. I talked about gross food prep. Imagine a long time ago how disgusting the food prep was, how many diseases were there. We take it for granted today because when we buy things in stores, the bar that's still high for the standard of how your food's prepared.

And that's why we have so much processed food, but like fresh food, you know, it's generally very safe to go out anywhere. And that's why an outbreak, a GI outbreak in particular, that means someone was sick and had diarrhea and didn't wash their hands and they worked on your food. Gross. Just the fact of having food requirements, meaning I'm going to inspect your restaurant and if it's not up to snuff and I see your people doing gross things, I'm going to shut you down, has made a big impact, right? So there's rigorous food safety regulations and inspections and certifications restaurants have to have just to open their doors and stay open. Vital component to public health. And we don't think about it because we show up, we get our food, we hope the service is good. If

it's not, we complain about it and then we leave. But behind the scenes, there are tons of food safety and serving regulations and public health-based food safety criteria that restaurants have to meet. So these are impacts of public health that people have been involved in. Hand-washing vaccines, food safety, sanitation. What about the human element? And I share this because I know when I watch the news and probably you all, lumps of people get lumped in. I'm sure there's great people in USAID, in the federal government. I know I've worked with some great folks.

And it seems that the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater to some extent. I'm not a huge fan of sweeping change. I think when you come in as a new leader, you listen to what's working, you listen to what's not, and then you adjust. Stop doing what's not working. Start doing what folks make sense and is in budget and all that good stuff. So in this public health space, I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that the secretary takes a look and takes a good review and talks to people and gets feedback and then makes changes. Because there's a huge human element to all agencies, but in particular public health, right? There are epidemiologists tracking disease outbreaks and nursing homes like the one your

grandparents are in. There are health inspectors or environmental health specialists is really what I've known them as that make sure our food is safe. They're community health workers that are providing critical services to people in rural Appalachia who have zero dental care and their dental hygiene is awful to inner city violent areas where Children program, where they're trying to reduce and have reduced infant mortality by teaching mothers, a lot of times young mothers, that they should take prenatal vitamins and eat a little better and stop drinking and smoking when they're pregnant and then have better outcomes and reduce the chance that their child might die. That's a pretty human element to me. They're often unsung heroes. They work tirelessly to protect your health. The hours I've seen, the individual, the emotional connection, right, that folks have to their regular patients, to the community that we go serve when we have to do a disease investigation, it's pretty awe-inspiring. And I think elected officials that have say over that the budget for

public health and the training and where the money goes and all that should have to go spend a few weeks at the local health department in their area or different areas in their whole district because they will get a different view on how the money that sits up in the coffers somewhere on Capitol Hill gets down to the middle of the mountains where people's teeth are rotting out because they drink Mountain Dew because they're not able to get that education. It's a huge impact and it makes a big difference. So the danger of politicization is that unfortunately, public health has become unbelievably politicized in recent years, right? And a lot of that I feel is on leadership and every organization that was involved with it. The problem is that when it becomes politicized and messages get skewed and they fit one part or the other, it undermines the trust in public health institutions

and it makes it harder for the people on the ground with the folks that are sick that are underprivileged to actually give them effective solutions. And in turn, when politics or political agendas interfere with legit scientific evidence or behavioral change practices, everyone suffers. We need to protect public health from just a wholesale cleaning of the house. On the other side of that, we need to make sure the folks that are in public health are being efficient and spending money the right way and to the best of their ability, not working a political agenda of their own, because the whole focus is whoever it is, whoever you vote for, we're

taking care of you. And key that I saw is that we shouldn't measure public health, whether it's emergency response, where I was or epidemiology or holistic health, by did you fill out the checklist the right way and make your plan real big so that I saw the keywords in it. And I say, yep, you get the money. It's a nonsensical way to do public health and to fund it. And that needs to change. And I hope it changes. I hope it's based on can you actually support a pandemic? Do you really know how to do a disease investigation? Right? And by and large, a lot of people do.

Some people don't know. In any profession, there is, I studied it in a book and that's what I'm going to go by. And I studied it and then I'm in person and I need to adjust. So I feel like public health could use an overhaul from the standpoint of how operational are we? And have we been day to day and in emergencies? So in conclusion, the public health is 100% to me a vital public good, right? It's not a partisan issue or it shouldn't be. It's about protecting the health and wellness of all of us, all Americans. We need to support our public health systems, trust their expertise right now.

Saying that, don't just trust the expertise on MSNBC or CNN or Fox or NPR. Look at all of it and see what the common ground is, right? Resist the urge to be like, well, my party said this, so I'm just going to believe that because often that's not the fact. But by working together, right, I think we can build more resilient communities. We can keep public health to its core mission, which is not to make one party more happy or appease them. It's to take care of the public holistically, medically, mentally, physically, spiritually. As always, my two cents here on the podcast, on on youtube everywhere on the socials is mine not that of anyone i work for now or worked for before for more on public health check out the

backlog of the people process progress podcast and some episodes that were under the kev talks in between the slide series of episodes they're on the same stream i've changed the name a couple times but you can also follow me on instagram and x at pennell 5 Fit, P-A-N-E-L-L, the number 5 F-I-T. As part of your holistic public health, visit the Penel 5 Fitness Club YouTube channel and use it as a resource. I share fitness ideas, workouts, 15 to 20 seconds at a time. You can hear my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after action reviews. If you're getting into that, you can also check out the Jiu-Jitsu podcast that I also host. And join the fun of my reel and perhaps your virtual cold plunges,

which I've found very helpful. That and cold showers for recovery. I also do Wim Hof breathing. But until next time, take care of your people, right? And support your teams in a shared process so you can all make progress together. Godspeed, y'all.