The early consensus in the public health community is that Kansas got a good one in Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips.
Eberhart-Phillips is a physician, a seasoned public health official who has worked internationally and a former journalist. He also holds a master of divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion.
“He brings new perspective to Kansas,” said Edie Snethen, director of the Kansas Association of Local Public Health Departments.
A new perspective that many say is sorely needed in the wake of former health director Howard Rodenberg’s dismissal in 2007 and the 15-month public-health leadership vacuum it created.
“It’s a hugely important job right now,” Snethen said, referring to the need for leadership on a host of public health issues including new national accreditation standards being proposed for state and local public health departments.
Snethen, who served on the committee that interviewed Eberhart-Phillips for the job, said his varied background was among his strongest selling points.
“What’s unique about Jason Eberhart-Phillips is that he has experience at the state and local levels in public health,” Snethen said. “That’s key because we’re talking about a public health system.”
Most recently, Eberhart-Phillips served as the health officer for El Dorado County, Calif. Prior to that, he taught in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at University of Otago in New Zealand, served as the chronic disease director for the Alaska health agency and a service officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I think he has exceptional credentials,” said Gianfranco Pezzino, a senior analyst at the Kansas Health Institute and a former state epidemiologist at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Pezzino first met Eberhart-Phillips when both were service officers at the CDC.
“He has a super mix of experience at the federal, state and local levels,” Pezzino said of Eberhart-Phillips.
Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, the chairman of two health related committees in the Legislature, said that Eberhart-Phillips “has the potential to be a very good fit for Kansas.”
Barnett said the leadership void created by Rodenberg’s dismissal “has been costly.” But he said his early impression of Eberhart-Phillips and the experience he brings to the Kansas job have been “very positive.”
Up for the challenge
In a recent interview with the KHI News Service, Eberhart-Phillips said he’s eager to take on the state’s public health challenges, which, he said, include reducing the state’s growing obesity rate, strengthening its traffic safety laws and helping policymakers understand the power of social, environmental and behavioral drivers of public health.
He said 99.99 percent of the factors that determine the health of Kansans take place outside of hospitals, doctor’s offices and other health care settings.
“Our health is determined in the activities of our daily lives,” he said. “Do we get enough physical activity? Do we have access to good, healthy foods? Are we in social and cultural environments that help support us in doing the things that we know are right for our health?”
Eberhart-Phillips said laws requiring restaurants to provide consumers with easily accessible information about the nutritional content of meals are good examples of how government can help people make healthy choices.
“I wouldn’t want you to trumpet that as the first thing I’d like to push, I’m just giving an example that I think anyone can understand of how we might facilitate helping people make healthy choices,” he said.
Research in New York is demonstrating that the menu-labeling laws put in place there are helping people make healthier choices, Eberhart-Phillips said, adding that any policies he proposes in Kansas will also be based on whether the research shows they are effective.
“Wherever there is strong scientific evidence that an intervention will work in terms of addressing some really pressing health and disease problem, that is where I want to focus our attention,” he said.
Approximately 62.3 percent of Kansans are overweight or obese. The cost of treating Kansans for obesity-related conditions has been estimated at more than $650 million a year. The price tag for smoking-related illnesses in Kansas has been estimated by the Kansas Health Policy Authority at $930 million a year, with $196 million of that coming from the state’s Medicaid program.
Barnett said doing more to prevent chronic disease is a key to controlling health care costs, which are threatening to overwhelm the nation’s economy as well as state and federal budgets.
“I think public health has a dramatic role to play,” Barnett said.
Barnett said he and other lawmakers look forward to Eberhart-Phillips providing leadership on public health issues, even, he said, if that means taking on potentially controversial issues such as menu-labeling laws and smoking bans.
“As long as his opinions and recommendations are based in science, I think that is what the Legislature needs,” Barnett said. “We need an expert on public health.”
For his part, Eberhart-Phillips promises to get right to work.
“Let me say that I’ll try my best to make up for any lost time,” he said, referring to the 15 months the state health officer job has been vacant. “And I’ll do my best to meet or exceed expectations for leadership in this role.”
In addition to the statutory position of state health officer, which by law must be filled by a physician, Eberhart-Phillips will oversee more than 400 employees as director of KDHE’s Division of Health. He will earn approximately $170,000 a year.
-Jim McLean is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at jmclean@khi.org or at 785-233-5443, ext. 123.