On this week's Podcast from Washington Ian and Eli discuss appropriations, Planned Parenthood, and Partnerships to Improve Community Health.

NACCHO's government affairs team discusses appropriations season and Congress' return into session. Also featured in this episode, the MRC program is facing severe cuts.

Paul Yeghiayan, the President of the Foundation for the Public's Health discussed the Foundation along with his goal's for the coming year, and how the Foundation hopes to impact the public health field.

At NACCHO Annual 2015, Hennepin County Public Health, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded a Model Practice Award for its practice titled, “Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Program within an STD Clinic: An Innovative HIV Prevention Approach for MSM.” As the largest HIV/STD clinic in the state of Minnesota, Hennepin County’s Red Door Clinic added pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, to its existing HIV prevention services in April 2013, just nine months after the FDA approved Truvada for use as PrEP. In this podcast, Ejay Jack, a Community Health Specialist at Hennepin County, discusses how the PrEP program was established, lessons learned through implementation, goals for the program moving forward, and considerations for other local health departments thinking about what they could or should do to support PrEP implementation in their jurisdiction. Additionally, Mr. Jack discusses the health department’s experience submitting an application for NACCHO’s Model Practices Program and what it means to receive a Model Practice designation.

On this week's Podcast from Washington Eli Briggs and Ian Goldstein discuss appropriations bill mark ups and how you can get involved over the August break while Congressional representatives are in their home districts.

Director of the Office of National Drug Policy Michael Botticelli sat down for a chat with Ian Goldstein about the opioid epidemic and how local health departments can help prevent opioid and prescription drug overdose in their communities.

In order to build comprehensive preparedness plans that are inclusive of populations with functional and access needs, preparedness planners must take a “whole-community” approach towards engaging a diverse range of community partners. On this podcast a panel of local health department preparedness planners who have experience with community partner engagement for the purpose of inclusive medical countermeasure planning explain which partnerships they have established, the approaches they use to engage these partners, and the benefits of such partnerships as they relate to medical countermeasure planning and response.

On part one of this two-part podcast a panel of local health department preparedness planners discusses how they define the preparedness planning needs of at-risk populations in their jurisdictions and how they have accounted for those those with functional and access needs in their medical countermeasure response planning. They will share best practices for how to they have identified these populations in their communities and will share strategies and planning considerations for inclusive medical countermeasure planning.

Government Affairs Director Eli Briggs and Specialist Ian Goldstein discuss the SCOTUS King vs. Burwell ruling as well as appropriations committee markups.

In this week's podcast from Washington Eli and Ian discuss the LHHS mark-up bill in the House Sub-Committee, as well as what you can do while your Congressional member is back home for the July 4 break.