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Q&A
Post-COVID health system improvements, technology integration, and public health campaigns
1:19:46
ยท
4 min
Council Member Mercedes Narcisse asks a series of questions about improvements in the city's health system since COVID-19, integration of new technologies, and plans for public health campaigns. Acting Commissioner Michelle Morse provides a comprehensive response addressing these topics.
- Changes in healthcare seeking behavior and service delivery were observed during and after the pandemic
- An extensive COVID after-action report detailing challenges, successes, and learnings has been published
- DOHMH is exploring AI technologies and data analytics to improve health services
- The department continues to prioritize public health campaigns for preventive care and lifesaving interventions
Mercedes Narcisse
1:19:46
How has the city health system evolved and improved since COVID nineteen pandemic, particularly in terms of infrastructure, access to care, and public health preparedness.
1:19:58
There are specific lessons learned that have been incorporated into the budget to better support future health crisis.
1:20:08
Now I'm gonna go to another question.
1:20:10
How is the health department planning to integrate new technologies like AI and data analytics into the city's health system to improve service delivery and patient outcomes?
1:20:23
What investment are being made in this area?
1:20:27
What role, that's another one, what role will public health campaigns play in raising awareness about preventive care?
1:20:35
Since my number one thing is to prevent.
1:20:38
This specific campaign's plan to educate New Yorkers about the importance of routine checkups, cancer screenings, and other preventive health measures because we realize there's an increase in colon cancer for black men, some under 20s, I mean under 30s.
1:21:00
Thank you.
Michelle Morse
1:21:01
Thank you for those questions Chair Narcisse.
1:21:04
I will do my best to try to answer them.
1:21:06
So the first one I think you asked about changes kind of in healthcare, the healthcare system and service delivery since the pandemic.
1:21:15
There are a number of things that did change during and after the pandemic including ability to seek care, ability to seek primary care prevention services, mammograms, colonoscopy, etcetera.
1:21:27
So we did see significant changes in health seeking behavior during and in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic for a number of different reasons.
1:21:36
One example that I'll give is we've talked a little bit about in our most recent HIV data, and I wanna continue to highlight the work of our HIV teams because it's such important and lifesaving work.
1:21:49
And one of the things that we saw was actually there was an increase in diagnosis of HIV in 2023 compared to 2022, but a decrease in new cases of HIV.
1:22:02
So the reason I mentioned that is as an example of new diagnosis is usually someone actually had HIV but didn't seek care early enough, and we think the pandemic is part of the reason that happened, and then got a new diagnosis.
1:22:17
So even though the incidents, the new cases of HIV went down, people were getting their diagnosis of HIV a bit later and it made our numbers look higher.
1:22:26
So that's just one example of changes in care seeking and healthcare delivery in the pandemic and after.
1:22:32
There are many, many, many lessons from COVID.
1:22:36
I can't speak to all of them today.
1:22:39
The city did work on for two years on a COVID after action report that describes in detail some of the challenges, the successes, and the learnings from the COVID pandemic.
1:22:52
And that report was published online I think a week or two ago.
1:22:56
It really does list out extensively the things that we learned and the things that we hope to do better.
1:23:01
I do believe that we learned quite a bit about historic marginalization and disinvestment and inequities both in geography and race led to some communities being unfairly hurt more by COVID than others.
1:23:16
And we have a number of ways that we're trying to make sure that going forward, health equity is at the center of all of our emergency response work.
1:23:24
So much was learned and I defer to that very extensive report.
1:23:28
For AI and technology, we have a center for population health and data science and a division of IT that are both working collaboratively to explore the ways in which our agency could benefit from AI technologies and continuing to innovate and expand on the ways in which we do data surveillance, sharing that data with the public, etcetera.
1:23:52
And then finally for public health campaigns on preventive health, that is our bread and butter.
1:23:58
We fully agree with you and appreciate council support on making sure that we have the resources we need to educate the public about the most lifesaving interventions and preventive care, and we plan to continue to do that work.