Michigan Dept of Health & Human Services sent this bulletin at 05/28/2024 02:00 PM EDT
May is Mental Health Awareness Month
Support for public health workers and health professionals
Providing care and services to the public can be demanding and stressful. Work-related stress can affect your well-being, the care and services you give to others while doing your job, and the well-being of the people you care about outside of work.
It is critical for managers and supervisors to recognize what stress looks like, and to change organizational policies and practices to reduce job-related stress. It is also helpful for managers and workers alike to learn how to cope with stress and know where to go for help.
Recognize the symptoms of stress in yourself and others:
Feeling irritated, angry, or in denial.
Feeling uncertain, nervous, or anxious.
Feeling helpless or powerless.
Lacking motivation.
Feeling tired, overwhelmed, or burned out.
Feeling sad or depressed.
Difficulties sleeping.
Having trouble concentrating.
Know about burnout: Workers experiencing burnout often feel exhausted and cynical. Working in a distressing environment can strain a person’s physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Workers with burnout are more likely to experience mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. Burnout can also impact employee retention. Workers experiencing burnout may be less engaged at work and choose to leave their job or their profession altogether.
Tips for managers and supervisors: Managers and supervisors can play a big role in reducing and preventing job-related stress. Burnout can develop when workers have too many demands that require effort and not enough resources to meet those demands. While individual-level solutions like self-care and resilience training can help, changing workplace policies and practices is the best way to address burnout.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has an online training for public health supervisors and managers: Understanding and Preventing Burnout among Public Health Workers. This training provides participantswith strategies to prioritize employee health and well-being and prevent burnout.
Managers and supervisors can use a Total Worker Health® approach to implement policies, practices, and programs. A program to reduce work-related stress might include:
Implement organizational and management policies that eliminate the root causes of stress, such as excess demands or workplace bullying. Also implement policies that provide workers with increased flexibility and control over their work and schedules.
Provide training for supervisors on strategies to reduce stressful working conditions.
Provide training and interventions to build resiliency for stress management and reduction for all workers. Provide access to Employee Assistance Programs.
Tips to cope and enhance resilience:
Communicate with coworkers, supervisors, and employees about job stress.
Talk openly about how job stress is affecting your well-being.
Identify factors that cause stress and work together to identify solutions.
Ask about how to access mental health resources in your workplace.
Identify and accept things in which you do not have control over
Take breaks during your shift to rest, stretch, or check in with supportive colleagues, coworkers, friends, and family.
When away from work, get exercise when you can. Spend time outdoors either being physically active or relaxing.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
News & Articles
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Health outcomes for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (AA and NHPIs) are impacted by a range of both shared and unique factors, including access to quality health care, social and cultural barriers, neighborhood and built environments, and financial resources.
Another way to help eliminate health inequities is committing to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS). Effective, equitable, and respectful care and services that are responsive to diverse cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages, economic and environmental circumstances, and health literacy levels are essential. These considerations, along with economic and environmental circumstances, are crucial to close the gap in health outcomes for AA and NHPI populations.
Committing to working with trusted partners and community-based organizations, such as the Asian Health Coalition and the American Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO), is another way to help eliminate health inequities. AAPCHO's efforts fall within three focus areas: health equity & access, training & capacity building, and health care quality & innovation.Resources are available for each of these focus areas.
Michigan Mental Health Work, Hawaii Wildfires Environmental Impact
Elizabeth Hertel, Director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, tells us how her department is working to improve mental health; Kathleen Ho, Deputy Director for Environmental Health with Hawaii’s State Department of Health, explains her team’s response to the historic wildfires in 2023; and an ASTHO blog article looks at five trends from across state legislatures of which you should be aware.
The 2024 Michigan Special Pathogens Response Network (SPRN) Conference will be held on June 18. This one-day in-person event will include training in the morning and an afternoon exercise for hospitals and EMS agencies. Please look at the SPRN Conference Flyer with agenda and registration information.
The conference will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Lansing, MI. The intended audience includes: EMS, hospital staff, infection prevention and control, healthcare coalitions, public health and emergency management.
To equip participants with the skills needed to be full or part-time Public Information Officers (PIOs), including oral and written communications; understanding and working with the media; and basic tools and techniques to perform effectively as a PIO, both in the proactive/ advocacy times and crisis/emergency response.
This course is intended for newly appointed emergency managers from federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and emergency management agencies, and prospective professionals transferring from another discipline to emergency management.
**Prerequisite:IS-029.a: Public Information Officer Awareness**
Lake Michigan College, Benton Harbor - FULL (can change)
St. Ignace Fire Dept MI-TRAIN Course ID 1104108 Registration Deadline
Medical Countermeasures: POD, Planning and Response
This course is a guide for local health officials and their partners to coordinate plans to provide mass distribution of medical countermeasures in response to a large-scale public health incident. This course focuses on planning considerations, recommendation to achieve the CDC’s 48-hour standard for Mass Prophylaxis, and the local community’s Mass Prophylaxis and Point of Dispensing (POD) site preparedness. The course material is applicable to pandemic influenza, bio-terrorism, and other public health emergencies.
Suggested audiences: Law Enforcement, Emergency Medical Services, Hospital personnel: physicians and nurses, Mental Health, Public Health Services, Public Works, Emergency Management Organizations, Tribal, county, state, and federal medical, Private Industry, School Personnel, Volunteer Organizations, Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), Dispatchers, Medical Reserve Corps.
Provided by Texas A&M Engineering Extension (TEEX) at the Jackson County Health Department, Jackson, MI
The Guardian of Public Health is a monthly newsletter from the Bureau of Emergency Preparedness, EMS and Systems of Care (BEPESoC), within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). The Guardian aims to provide readers with relevant content on topics that affect the public health of Michigan's citizens and communities.
This publication was supported by Cooperative Agreement number 1NU90TP922062-01-00, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.
Bureau of Emergency Preparedness, EMS and Systems of Care | 1001 Terminal Rd, Lansing, MI 48906 | 517-335-8150
