Eight professors at the 91̽�� have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences, the organization . The Academy said members are elected “in recognition of their outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the Academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”��

The 2023 cohort includes 29 new members. Twenty-six were elected by current WSAS members, and the other three were selected because they recently joined one of the National Academies.����

The 91̽��faculty who will be formally inducted in September are:����

• , Kirby & Kelly Cramer Endowed Professor of Nursing, for “contributions to improving public health systems and services. Foundational to Senator Murray’s , her research supports collection of standardized public health financial data assessing impact.”��
• , associate professor of microbiology and of genome sciences at the 91̽��School of Medicine and professor and investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, for “contributions to our understanding of viral evolution and how mutations shape a pathogen’s ability to infect and spread. His discoveries have driven the scientific and public discourse on numerous viruses, including influenza, HIV, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.”��
• , Washington Research Foundation Innovation Professor in Clean Energy and professor of mechanical engineering, for “outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of battery electrode architectures and the development of advanced manufacturing methods to accelerate commercialization of materials processing technology.”��
• , professor of sociology and of public policy and governance, director of the and associate vice provost for research, for “groundbreaking work in demography and the sociology of migration, taking a multi-faceted approach that illuminates the dynamic interplay between demographic conditions and factors such as gender, socio-economic context, and climate change.”��
• , research professor of microbiology at the 91̽��School of Medicine, professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and director of the Pathogen-Associated Malignancies Integrated Research Center, for “For contributions to advancing our understanding of the role that small DNA tumor viruses – human papillomaviruses (HPV) and human polyomavirus (HPyV) – play in cancer development.”
• , J. Ray Bowen Endowed Professor for Innovation in Engineering Education and professor of aeronautics and astronautics, for “extraordinary contributions to guidance and control of autonomous and distributed aerospace systems, for leadership in educational innovations, and for advancing aerospace technology transfers leading to industry research collaborations throughout his career.”��
• , Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Information Systems and chair of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, for “outstanding contributions to advance our understanding of how technologies impact the behaviors and decision-making of individuals, organizations, and society in the contexts of e-commerce, social media, fintech, healthcare, and sharing economy.”��
• , Thomas and Marilyn Nielsen Endowed Professor in Engineering, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of PacTrans and STAR Lab, for “pioneering contributions to traffic sensing, transportation data science, edge AI, and smart infrastructure system theory and technologies, as well as the exceptional leadership in regional collaborations among academia, industry, and agencies for creating transformational mobility solutions.”��

Correction: An earlier version of this release omitted the election of Denise Galloway to the Academy.

Now, as these public attacks further cripple public health agencies, a 91̽�� public health expert is calling for action to defend and support public health agencies in communities across the state. The loss of local health expertise resulting from these attacks will have long-term consequences beyond the pandemic.

“Even as our local and state public health leaders and staff work tirelessly and heroically this year to keep us healthy and reduce the load on our hospitals, we have seen countless examples of harassment and threats directed at them,” said , a professor in the School of Nursing and director of the 91̽��Northwest Center for Public Health Practice.

“Public policymakers, leaders of our health care system and the public need to get behind the work of local public health officials,” said Bekemeier, who has decades of experience working with, studying and supporting public health efforts and systems in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. “This is work that generally goes on behind the scenes and that we all deeply depend on for our health and safety, whether we realize it or not. We cannot expect to have healthy communities without them — now or when this pandemic is eventually behind us.”

She added that these experts are the first line of leadership when a health crisis occurs, and the pandemic is just one of many crises these agencies are battling every day. Public health leaders historically have had the respect and relationships in local communities that help them make the tough calls to get a community back on its feet. These tough calls may mean, for example, closing a restaurant that’s not changed its unsafe food handling practices, or sending kids home from school during a measles outbreak if they have not been immunized.

“But that situation has all been turned on its head for no fault of the public health experts in their communities,” she said. “They don’t go into these jobs as politicians. They go into them with backgrounds in science and community-building and, under normal circumstances, that means they have community support behind them during tough situations, like outbreaks or food safety recalls, and that has worked really well.”

Joining Bekemeier in this call for state leaders to take action on behalf of public health workers is Jefferson Ketchel, executive director of the Washington State Public Health Association. Ketchel, who has a graduate degree from 91̽��Bothell, also has decades of experience with public health in the state as previous administrator of Snohomish Health District, Grant County Health District and other positions.

“Some of our public health leaders have been in their jobs for decades. They are passionate about the work, but it is not an easy job. They put in countless hours protecting our health and preventing disease. I am disappointed that we don’t see greater support and more of our elected leaders vocally and visibly behind them,” Ketchel said.

Bekemeier and Ketchel hope that policymakers will show their support for public health workers and be their advocate; that other medical professionals will speak on behalf of the critical role public health workers play in their work and health system. They hope community members will tell their friends, family and neighbors to recognize and thank their local public health officials.

“Because without them, the alternative is more hospital beds and ventilators,” Bekemeier said.

As businesses and public spaces reopen across the nation, the old-school public health detective work known as contact tracing is becoming a major component of the battle to contain the novel coronavirus that causes the deadly COVID-19 disease.

It’s an investigative strategy long used for finding and informing people exposed to contagious diseases, such as measles and STDs, and now agencies across the country focused on combating the pandemic need support to expand their workforce to conduct contact-tracing interviews and save lives.

To provide training for this expanding workforce, the 91̽��’s created the free, online course to support public health agencies — including smaller, rural public health districts and tribal health departments — to help their existing and growing workforce in the art and science of conducting a contact-tracing interview.

“At the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice, we were keenly aware of the strain public health workers and agencies were under long before the novel coronavirus hit,” said , professor in the 91̽��School of Nursing and director of the center. “As COVID-19 spread, we knew from practice partners that a training was needed for the public health workforce that ​could quickly and efficiently assist a wide variety of public health agencies.”

While Washington state has launched a large-scale effort to train contract tracers, other states and their partners can take similar steps using instead of creating all of their own training from the ground up. This is why Every Contact Counts was developed at the request of and in partnership with the Kansas Health Institute, which has been helping Kansas enhance its contact-tracing efforts at the state level. Now, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment is requiring Every Contact Counts as part of its training plan for all new contact tracers.

“We wanted to create a foundational training that not only met the needs for us in Kansas, but could support other states across the country in assisting their own local health departments where a lot of the COVID-19 containment work is being done,” said Charles Hunt, a senior analyst with the Kansas Health Institute. “While many local health departments manage their own contact-tracing workforce, they need access to training resources, like Every Contact Counts, that set their staff up for success and protect their communities.”

The federal Health Resources and Services Administration promoted the training in an email to public health professionals, along with the and other national organizations.

With Every Contact Counts, professionals will learn to describe contact tracing and why it’s important to public health, articulate why COVID-19 is unique when it comes to contact tracing, identify the key components of a successful contact-tracing interview and complete an interview with confidence, clarity and compassion.

Since each state has slightly different policies for containing the outbreak, the 91̽��training provides a foundation for performing contact tracing and a certificate to verify successful completion of the course.

“Contact tracing is going to be an essential part of our reopening and containment efforts moving forward,” said , professor of epidemiology in the 91̽��School of Public Health whose work with 91̽��graduate students provided the basis for the training. “We need to trace every contact possible, because every contact counts in stopping this disease.”

Cold-calling people who have tested positive for the virus or who may have been exposed to it — and getting them the information and help they need to self-isolate — can be challenging. While some will be thankful for the information and help, others can be annoyed or agitated. Protecting privacy is paramount in these encounters, and some subjects may actively resist engaging with the interviewer. The 91̽��training is designed to help interviewers approach, with skill and compassion, the fears and the sudden, dramatic change in their lives that subjects face.

The training falls into three main categories — what contact tracing is, contact-tracing specifics for COVID-19, and communicating with cases and contacts. Exercises include interview skill-building videos, section quizzes and an exercise where participants practice key decision-making during a contact interview.

Throughout the training site are tips and encouragement from experienced contact tracers, such as this segment from Neil Abernethy at the 91̽��School of Medicine:

At the end of the course, there’s a final assessment. Participants who receive a score of 80% or better will get a non-credit certificate of completion that they can download and use to verify the training they received.

“With��Every Contact Counts, we want public health professionals to feel like they have the��knowledge and resources��to complete a contact-tracing interview with confidence, clarity and compassion,” said ,��e-learning manager at the Northwest Center. “We know they will be talking to��community members��who are scared, overwhelmed��or��possibly even��dismissive of��contact-tracing��efforts.��This training helps��interviewers��prepare and practice��so they can��provide needed information in a way that encourages people to listen and slow the spread��of��COVID-19.”

The Northwest Center for Public Health Practice developed this training, which was made possible thanks to a grant from the and contributions by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Health Institute.

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For more information, news media can contact Baseman jbaseman@uw.edu and Bekemeier at bettybek@uw.edu.

Learn more about the ����’s Population Health Initiative: a 25-year, interdisciplinary effort to bring understanding and solutions to the biggest challenges facing communities.

Differences in the health of rural residents compared to their urban neighbors are startling. In Washington, for instance, rural residents are one-third more likely to die from intentional self-harm or 13 percent more likely to die from heart disease.

However, while statistics like these help guide public health policy and spending, they can hide even greater health disparities within those rural communities, said , director of the 91̽��School of Public Health’s and a professor in the .

“Populations in rural areas already have suffered disproportionately from a lot of negative health outcomes,” she said. “Then on top of that, they lack the data, capacity and infrastructure to understand and better address those problems.”

Yet, some of the data rural public health officials need to better serve their communities exists but is hard to access and use. So, what gives?

To find out, Bekemeier and her colleagues at the Northwest Center embarked on the : a five-year effort to identify, gather and visualize data in four Northwest states to help rural communities more effectively address health disparities and achieve health equity.

“Rural communities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska face high poverty and are home to large populations of Alaska Native, Native American, Latino and other residents who are often marginalized and impacted by health disparities,” explains the SHARE-NW .

The SHARE-NW project is currently in its third year. The results of the group’s in a of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

The 91̽��researchers conducted phone interviews in 2018 with officials in the four Northwest states, including staff from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the��Panhandle Health District in Idaho, the��Crook County Health Department in Oregon, the��Wahkiakum County Health Department in Washington and 21 other rural health organizations.

“In our study with rural public health system leaders, we identified barriers to using data, such as 1) lack of easy access to timely data, 2) data quality issues specific to rural and tribal communities, and 3) the inability for rural leaders to use those data,” .

“You may have a very seemingly homogenous population on the face of it,”��said Bekemeier, the study’s lead author. “But you have small population groups that are very disproportionately impacted by certain issues, and leaders in those communities may not be aware that these problems exist, let alone how deeply individuals are affected.”

For instance, one agency told the researchers: “What immediately comes to mind is our migrant farmworker community, especially with their language barriers and their temporary status in our community … It’s really hard to get the data to know who we’re looking at …”

To address this problem, SHARE-NW is building a readily accessible database and the related visualizations so local health officials can more easily talk about the makeup of their communities, identify local needs and foster data-supported decisions.

“If you have data, you can talk about what the issues are that need to be prioritized,” Bekemeier explained. “Now, we’re focusing on community-specific data for six priority areas that were common across their community health assessments.”

Those areas are: obesity, including physical activity and nutrition/food access; diabetes; tobacco; mental health, including suicide and substance abuse; violence and injury; and oral health, including access to dental care.

“We’re doing this with them,” she said of the rural health leaders. One of the key elements for creating this robust data and tool set is local participation in not only using the data, but also adding to it from their own local research.

Bekemeier added that the work done at SHARE-NW is also tied into UW’s , a university-wide effort to solve some of the most difficult problems facing communities around the world.

“SHARE-NW is all about building community capacity and bringing information to where it is so deeply needed so that data-driven and community-engaged decisions can be made that will directly affect population-level health disparities and build health equity,” she said.

Other co-authors are , Department of Psychosocial & Community Health, 91̽��School of Nursing; , assistant professor of Nursing & Healthcare Leadership, 91̽��Tacoma; and India Ornelas,��assistant professor of health services and , professor of health services, both in the Department of Health Services, 91̽��School of Public Health.

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For more information, contact��Bekemeier at��bettybek@uw.edu.