Health officer participates in public health initiative

Margaret Jahn, health officer for the Freehold Area Health Department, is a recent graduate of the inaugural class of the Public Health Leadership Initiative for Emer-gency Response (PHLIER) program at the New Jersey Center for Public Health Preparedness (NJCPHP) at the Univer-sity of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-School of Public Health.

The PHLIER program provides training and experience that helps health officers, public health administrators, law enforcement officials, hospital administrators and other public health professionals to become the next generation of public health leaders.

According to a press release, PHLIER is more than a leadership training, it applies the skill each Fellow already possesses in new and innovative ways.

"We designed PHLIER to be like the real world," said Dr. Drew Harris assistant director of the NJCPHP. "We use realistic emergencies, not lectures, to challenge our Fellows to think and solve real-world problems."

During the eight-month program, Jahn, along with the selected PHLIER Fellows, designed a health department for "Phlierton," a fictional community that looks like a typical New Jersey region.

The PHLIER Fellows then led Phlierton through an assortment of public health emergencies, such as a bioterrorism food-borne outbreak, flood and chemical spill and an influenza pandemic.

"Due to the current events, such as the threat of terrorism and a possible pandemic influenza outbreak, public health leadership will be looked at to provide community leadership. By its design, PHLIER is the venue to promote and foster that leadership," said James Langenbach, program manager, Opera-tions Branch, at the state Depart-ment of Health and Senior Services during last month's closing ceremony.

Fellows are encouraged to apply for the PHLIER class. Seminars are held monthly beginning on Oct. 26, with the November seminar being a two-day retreat. More information is available at www.njcphp.org/phlier, or by calling (732) 235-9094.

The New Jersey Center for Public Health Preparedness at UMDNJ, based in the UMDNJ-School of Public Health, was established in 2003 and is part of the network of centers for public health preparedness funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion.

UMDNJ is the nation's largest freestanding public health sciences university with more than 5,500 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health-related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses.