Contributions of Public Health Advisors
After their introduction in 1948, the Public Health Advisor became an important part of the public health infrastructure of local and state health departments. In 1957 when the Public Health Service transferred the Venereal Disease Division to the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta (which later became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), PHAs were quickly recognized as an asset to other public health efforts because they were trained in phlebotomy (drawing of blood through venipuncture), they knew how to organize mass testing and could investigate diseases, and they could manage public health programs.
Public Health Advisors were soon called upon by the CDC to help with polio efforts in 1961, they built the national Immunization Program following the passage of the Vaccine Assistance Act of 1962, they were soon recruited to work in the Tuberculosis Program, and by 1992 could be found in virtually all of CDC programs working at local, state and federal levels of the public health system.
In addition to their regular assignments in the public health system, PHAs are called upon to respond to disease outbreaks or health disaster. Establishing a locally trained and geographically varied workforce has allowed CDC to have ready and deployable human resources for emergencies or emerging needs anywhere in the world. PHAs are part of a deployable team that can be credited with the eradication of smallpox, the identification of new strains of disease, and the halting of epidemics. PHAs have been called to respond to outbreaks of disease such as hantavirus, Lassa fever, monkeypox, encephalitis, tuberculosis, measles, AIDS, smallpox, polio, Legionnella, Guillain-Barré syndrome, SARS, syphilis, PPNG, babesiosis, and cholera.
PHAs were assigned to work in health campaigns such as Guinea worm, malaria, syphilis, diarrheal diseases, yellow fever, yaws, swine flu, and measles. PHAs have been sent to respond to major events such as floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the anthrax scare in the U.S. They even were assigned to be poll watchers in select Southern states during the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections.
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