UW School of Nursing researchers receive grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Researchers at the UW School of Nursing received an $800,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to advance work by the Public Health Activities and Services Tracking (PHAST) team. The funding will facilitate widespread adoption of the team’s uniform Chart of Accounts in governmental public health agencies.

Betty Bekemeier

Public health agencies across the United States want to show how the money they spend improves health outcomes. At present, the agencies can’t make a definitive link between spending and outcomes because there is no national uniform financial reporting standards for state and local governmental public health agencies.

“heat-map,” with the major programs local health and state departments provide

This absence of a uniform system results in a lack of comparable financial data collection and reporting.

“Our nation’s public health systems are threatened and eroding, in part because we have lacked consistent data and, therefore, evidence to articulate and demonstrate what public health systems do to protect the people’s health and assure healthy communities,” said Dr. Betty Bekemeier, UW professor of nursing. She is the project co-primary investigator with Dr. Simone Singh, University of Michigan, assistant professor of public health.

“This project is the first to enable public health agencies to crosswalk — mapping financial data from their existing general ledgers — and compare that data to other agencies in a meaningful way,” Bekemeier said.

Learn more about the PHAST project

Watch Bekemeier’s Shark Tank presentation for more information about the impact of the PHAST project.