Jackson State University President, Thomas Hudson, MS State Senator David Blount, and State Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Justin Turner were in attendance at the PHIT (Public Health Informatics & Technology) launch event on January 20th. Billed as “Brunch With PHIT”, the event took place in front of the JSU School of Health in the Jackson Medical Mall. PHIT was made possible through a $10 million cooperative grant for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
Girmay Berhie, Ph.d, the program’s principal investigator, says that PHIT will provide students with real-time, practical training that will help them adapt to a rapidly transforming digital climate.
“With this program we will equip students with the skills, knowledge, and values to help close educational gaps,” he said. “This will be a catalyst for digital transformation through our Informatics graduate certificate and undergraduate degrees in bioinformatics, data science, nursing informatics, business analytics, public health informatics and technology, and health informatics.”
President Hudson agreed, saying that it will take a holistic approach to building the type of capacity that helps eliminate health disparities.
“PHIT is a part of the overall strategy of the School of Health,” he said. “This is taking our words and our ideas and putting them into fundable action items”
PHIT will offer 2 new graduate certificates in both Public Health Informatics and Data Analytics in the fall. In addition, they have also initiated a High School component called HISTA (Health, Informatics, Science and Technology Academy) that will look to create multiple pathways to careers in informatics for high school students.
