New ASU school reimagining public health for the 21st century
ASU students work in a classroom at ASU's Health Futures Center. Photo by Samantha Chow/Arizona State University
It’s an early December afternoon, and Jocelyn Romero is standing in the hallway of Arizona State University’s Health South Building on the Downtown Phoenix campus.
Four months earlier, she was among the first cohort of students taking classes in the School of Technology for Public Health, part of ASU Health, which is a new, multifaceted approach to drive innovation in medicine and health care.
Romero was unsure of what she was about to learn. She hoped the school would provide uncharted pathways that would help her in her job as a case manager working with people with HIV. She also hoped it would enable her to better help people in marginalized communities.
Now, as she finished up her first semester in the school, her uncertainty has turned to purpose.
“We talk about all this really cool technology and apps and stuff that can better health outcomes, but sometimes these communities don’t have access to internet or a smartphone,” said Romero, who earned a bachelor's degree in social work from ASU. "The classes I’ve taken have really helped me understand that we need to be inclusive and come up with things that are accessible by everyone. And that’s not something I was thinking about before going into this program.”
The School of Technology for Public Health is a new kind of school, recognizing that public health will be deeply influenced by technology. The school, which offers a one-year Master of Science in public health technology and a two-year Master of Public Health, focuses on training students who will leverage technology and data as central to transforming public health.
“The school is trying to reimagine public health for the 21st century,” said Marc Adams, interim program director of the Master of Public Health degree. “We’re preparing the next generation of the public health workforce to tackle the problems that have always been around but with a different set of tools.”
A germ of an idea
The idea for the school originated with an op-ed former United States Assistant Surgeon General Susan Blumenthal wrote for the Boston Globe on Sept. 22, 2021. Blumenthal recognized the weakness in the U.S.’ health care infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that medicine “trains us to treat one person at a time while public health treats millions of people at a time.”
“There was a crisis with COVID, and you couldn’t get data,” said Blumenthal, who worked under four presidents. “It was 'The Hunger Games.' You couldn’t find where to get a vaccine, there wasn’t great availability, contact tracing was an issue, we didn’t have 21st-century masks.
“A new field needed to be created that brought biology and technology together.”
Blumenthal is a fellow at New America, a think tank focused on public policy, and she met with ASU President Michael Crow, who’s on New America’s board of directors.
Blumenthal told Crow she wanted to convene a group of top technology and public health experts. Crow was already a step ahead of her.
“He said, ‘Let’s just build it,’” Blumenthal recalled. “He saw the idea, he saw its importance and saw it was about the future.”
The School of Technology for Public Health was designed by working with national industry leaders who examined the needs in public health. The effort was co-chaired by Blumenthal and Sir Malcolm Grant, chancellor of the University of York and founding chairman of England’s National Health Service.
“One of the things I saw and felt we needed in reimagining public health in the 21st century was a cadre of engineers, computer scientists and physicists who had not been exposed to public health,” Blumenthal said. “How could we get these individuals who are bilingual in technology and public health?”
Filling a gap
Adams said both the one-year Master of Science in public health technology and the two-year Master of Public Health focus on the role of technology in health care, but that the two-year degree goes deeper into public health and the competencies that are required for students that want to go into the workforce.
“The one-year program is a little bit lighter on the public health competency side,” he said. “It’s really intended for those students who are looking for a gap year program.
“For example, someone coming from technology or engineering, and they want to contribute to public health. They see it as a socially important thing to do, and they want to bring their skill set to that.”
Adams said the first cohort of students includes those with a background in biology, psychology, education and visual design.
“We’re a big umbrella,” he said. “We’re trying to bring the nontraditional public health person into the field.”
Jyoti Pathak, the inaugural dean of School of Technology for Public Health, said he thinks about the school as health care plus "X" — the X standing for anything from computer science, engineering, communication, business, etc.
"I think our school is very uniquely positioned across the entire ASU Health umbrella to be highly interdisciplinary and highly collaborative," Pathak said. "Because you can not be a good public health professional if you do not know how to communicate. You can not be a good public health entrepreneur if you do not know how to design a business model. You can not develop technology if you do know the foundations of computer science and information science.
"So, we need that. We need all of that."
Some of the topics the first cohort of students studied this semester included artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and drones — all within the public health context.
Asked how drones could be used, Adams gave an example of a person in an isolated rural area who doesn’t have access to a pharmacy or any sort of medical system. That person still needs medical care, Adams said. They can have a telehealth appointment with a physician who evaluates their condition and prescribes a medication, and then the drone drops the medication off to a centralized area within the community.
“We’re eliminating distance, eliminating time, eliminating cost from the perspective of the patient, and allowing access to vital medications,” Adams said.
Figuring out how to use technology to help people in low resource settings is one of the goals Pathak has for the school.
"The technological solutions that we are creating today are not meant for a low resource environment where your broadband connectivity may not be there," Pathak said. "You may not even have stable electricity to run these machines.
"So, I think that will certainly be one of the important (aspects) of our school. How do we develop technology for the public who are in under-resourced environments?"
Tiffany Lemon, an assistant professor in ASU's College of Health Solutions, teaches a class on epidemiology and population health. The focus on technology within public health is vital, she said.
“I feel like if you don’t have an emphasis on technology, you’re behind the curve,” Lemon said. “I think (ASU) has a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of all these efforts that will no doubt lead public health into whatever that future looks like.”
Leela Udupa, who received her undergraduate degree in biological sciences from ASU, was attracted to the school because she wants to become a physician engineer who uses technology to amplify empathy.
“This program really helps me understand why so many people fall through the cracks and how we can design technological solutions that catch them,” she said. “I wanted a training that wasn’t just theoretical, and the program’s emphasis on applied projects, working within the Arizona community, the ethical technology design and working with real data sets, is exactly what I hoped for."
Blumenthal is not surprised that it was Crow who immediately saw the need for a school like this.
“I think that underscores the innovation agenda of ASU,” she said. “Always looking over the horizon, always seeing new opportunities and trying to meet the moment and think about the future. That’s ASU’s signature.”
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