ASTHO at 75: Celebrating the Past and Preparing for the Future

Fraser, Michael R.; Hardy, George

In the early 2000s, the executive directors and staff of ASTHO, NACCHO, NALBOH (the National Association of Local Boards of Health), and APHA, working with the IOM (Institute of Medicine), ASPH (the Association of Schools of Public Health), and CEPH (the Council on Education for Public Health), spent considerable time debating and creating a framework for the accreditation of official governmental public health agencies. That effort grew into the local and state health department accreditation program incorporated by ASTHO, NACCHO, APHA, and NALBOH, a new 501c3 named the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) and on which ASTHO has an ex-officio seat. As of 2016, a total of 22 state and territorial health agencies have received PHAB accreditation. 3 Building on the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, ASTHO grew its infectious disease portfolio in the early 2000s and continued to represent the interest of S/THOs on national advisory boards and committees including Federal Advisory Committees such as the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and several workgroups and committees of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Programs to address the growing burden of noncommunicable diseases also expanded in the 1990s and early 2000s as the United States witnessed large jumps in the rates of overweight and obesity nationwide. In 2005, ASTHO was one of 4 founding members of the National Forum on Heart Disease and Stroke. ASTHO also created the Alliance to Make US Healthiest, a national certification program recognizing excellence in workplace wellness. In 2009, ASTHO president Judy Monroe called on S/THOs to "Walk the Talk" on obesity prevention and commit personally and professionally to increasing physical activity and lead efforts to promote healthier lifestyles. This effort began the ASTHO "President's Challenge" program, in which the ASTHO president calls on peers to actively address specific public health issues or topics (Table 1) . ASTHO President's Challenges have led to significant work on several priority issues at the local, state, and federal levels including major work on preventing premature birth and infant mortality. As ASTHO moved into the new millennium, it continued to grow as a vocal and active advocate for state and territorial public health agencies. Programs in the areas of performance improvement, public health informatics, public health systems and services research, the integration of public health and primary care, responding to novel pathogens such as H1N1, SARS, West Nile virus, and Ebola virus, tobacco prevention and control, water and air quality, the impact of climate change on health, and other topical areas allowed ASTHO to partner closely with state and territorial health departments and their leadership teams. ASTHO also continues to cultivate the ASTHO Affiliate Council: a group of other state and territorial health organizations with specific constituencies such as chronic disease directors, health care accreditation agencies, public health nurses, oral health directors, HIV/AIDS directors, maternal and child health program directors (Table 2 ). In recent years, ASTHO also built its tracking capacity to monitor state and territorial legislative activity pertaining to public health. ASTHO maintains an active database of state and territorial legislative initiatives that relates to health and partners with peer associations including the National Governors' Associat