DRAFT

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Policy Review & Purpose

1. APHL will monitor for potentially informatics-relevant federal publications

   1. More efficient at a high level - of 28k publications in 2022, 7k mentioned “public health”

2. APHL will identify policies to comment on and will develop a policy summary and questions

2. We’d greatly appreciate your feedback and help identifying potential impacts - all of our letters will be stronger when we learn about each other’s work, agency processes, impacted workflows, public health practices, and more

3. After gathering feedback, APHL will develop and approve an APHL policy comment, here

3. We strongly encourage you to submit comments - we’ll provide tools to help

4. APHL comments and discussions with peers can be a template for your personal (identified or anonymous) and organizational comments - must be unique to be useful

Member Benefits

4. Increased awareness of federal policy-making processes and opportunities for comment

5. More timely response templates in the form of APHL comment letters that might help launch your organization’s letter-writing and may be timely enough to meet your agency review procedures

6. Increased awareness of types of comments and education about personal comments, including anonymous commenting - empowering!

7. Potential to improve federal alignment with PH needs - no guarantees as policymakers integrate all comments including industry and lobbying groups and the public

8. Potential for unique skill development - policy-writing is an art and a science and comments may be the start to an interesting career challenge - contact us to discuss a policy workgroup

Introduction

Under each policy, you’ll see a template of questions we’ve identified. We want your input on those specifically, but also on other impacts you may identify, especially what is missing from the policy overall (ie 'policy-writers forgot to include XYZ, impact is poorer data quality, etc.).

When APHL submits a final comment letter, you can use that as the basis for your unique organizational or personal (identified or anonymous) comments. Link to and deadlines for comment are specific to each policy - unless otherwise noted, they are unchangeable.

Discussion and feedback:

• Policy X – questions and feedback

• Open discussion – Ask Qs, bring up policies you’re interested in, education or tools that would help you, how you’d like this process changed to make it easier for you or your organization, etc.

How your input is used

We know PHA/L time is incredibly limited and few people are interested in reading the details of proposed policies, even when those might impact their future work. We know you’re solving today’s problems and can’t look too far ahead to worry about what might happen.

While we’re requesting your time and effort to share your input and potential impacts to your work, especially if those are unique (small or large agency, tribal, local, or territorial-specific impacts, and any unique arrangements you may have between lab, health department, HIEs, etc.).

We will look closely at the information you share and integrate it into our comment letter (as long as it doesn’t contrast with APHL’s needs). We know public health is not a monolith and public health intermediaries like APHL face different pressures and priorities, as do your varied health departments and different public health laboratories. Your comments will benefit your colleagues too, and can inform your as well as other’s comment letter development.

Federal policy-makers are required to consider all unique comments submitted through this public input process, so you can be certain that your words will be read by policy-makers. However, as STLTs work-forces are relatively small in comparison to health care and health IT, not many of our federal policy-writers come from a STLTs laboratory or health department. Because their experience is often health care industry, they do not always anticipate the impacts of policies on STLTs work. They will use your letters on the specific policy, but you will also be educating them to achieve longer-term understanding and appreciation of the incredible scope of the work you all do!

Summary of how your input is used:

• You directly contribute to APHL’s comment letter, making it stronger

• It increases shared understanding of policy impacts - APHL, CSTE, other partners, colleagues

• If you’re able to submit a unique personal and/or organizational comment, you increase the weight policymakers will place on public health comments

• Any public health letters submitted contribute to improving the long-term appreciation and understanding of unique STLTs challenges federal policy-makers aren’t aware of

Benefits to STLT participation

• Increased awareness of what polices are out there (if you participate in our policy WG calls - only quarterly, but we could increase that if there’s demand)

• More timely comment development so that you can have your customized letter reviewed for organizational submission (some departments and labs do this, some do not) without starting from scratch, and without writing it hours before submission

• Ability to work from pre-reviewed comments to submit personal comments - empowering!

• Potential to improve federal policy alignment with STLTs needs - can’t be guaranteed, as they need to incorporate all feedback, including from public, lobbying, and other industry groups.

• Potential to educate federal policymakers about STLTs environments, needs, and policy impacts

• Potential skill development - policy-writing is an art and a science - comment development might be a start to an interesting career direction - practicing policy analysis through our policy WG calls could provide a new public health direction for your career