by Justin B. Moore, PhD, MS

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As we welcome in May and increasingly warmer weather, I’d like to bring your attention to two excellent columns and a commentary recently published in the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice. The first is The Management Moment from the May/June issue, which is authored this month by Mark L. Braunstein, Martin LaVenture, and Edward L. Baker. In this column entitled “Public Health Informatics Incubators: Accelerating Innovation Through Creative Partnerships Between Informatics Experts and Public Health Agencies,” the authors make the case that informatics expertise is needed to improve the collection, use, and sharing of data within public health agencies. In this article, the authors share a potential solution (eg, “public health informatics incubators”) that could be replicated nation-wide to enhance decision making and the health of the public.

Another column in the current issue is News From NACCHO, brought to you by Sheree H. Keitt, Julie Alonso, Carol McPhillips-Tangum, Nicole Lezin, and Margaret Carr. In this article entitled “Advancing Trauma Center Injury and Violence Prevention: Public Health and Health Care Working Together,” the authors report on a collaborative initiative aimed at strengthening injury and violence preventing programs in hospitals. This innovative program focused on bolstering synergies between hospitals and public health agencies through the sharing of information and resources, and resulted in core standards and indicators for model trauma center programs. These standards are an excellent first step in improving injury and violence preventing programs and improving outcomes in the community.

Finally, I’d like to bring your attention to a commentary in our most recent supplement, Impact of Public Health Accreditation. This commentary by Allison Foster, Laura Rasar King, and Kaye Bender entitled “Are Public Health Academia, Professional Certification, and Public Health Practice on the Same Page?” seeks to dispel the myth that the academic public health, professional certification, and public health practice realms are out of sync. In this article, they make a compelling and persuasive case that the public health profession has been undergoing a rapid transformation over the last decade that has resulted in excellent synergy between these three branches of public health. While acknowledging that work remains to be done, the authors do an excellent job of demonstrating a convergence between academic public health and public health practice.

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Justin B. Moore, PhD, MS, FACSM, is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice and an Associate Professor in the Department of Implementation Science of the Wake Forest School of Medicine at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC, USA. Follow him at Twitter and Instagram. [Full Bio]