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State health officials outline priorities: respiratory surveillance, opioids, tribal partnerships
Summary
Department of Health officials briefed the House Health Care Committee on public health priorities including respiratory surveillance, the opioid crisis and tribal data sovereignty; members pressed for follow-up on trust-building, perinatal substance-use designations and an EMS buprenorphine pilot.
Members of the Washington House Health Care Committee heard an overview from the Washington State Department of Health on the agency’s role, priorities and recent initiatives, including expanded respiratory-illness surveillance, work on the opioid crisis and strengthened tribal partnerships.
Dr. Thao Kwan Get, chief science officer for the Washington Department of Health, told the committee that public health “is what we as a society do collectively, to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy,” and described a population-health approach that ranges from sanitation and vaccines to policies that address social drivers of health.
The department emphasized its data capabilities developed during the COVID-19 response: the respiratory-illness dashboard tracks deaths, hospitalizations and emergency-department visits for COVID-19, influenza and RSV, and is used to inform local public-health actions. Dr. Thao Kwan Get noted the department was monitoring recent upticks in COVID-19 activity and continued influenza and RSV hospitalizations, and said 18 COVID-19 deaths were recorded in the third week of December…
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