Philip Huang has done as much as anyone to get public health into the data game. Huang, the director of health and human services in Dallas County, is not only a doctor but came to the job with experience in research and data analysis. He managed to automate major increases in data volume without sacrificing quality, while improving data visualizations and other tools.
This proved key during the pandemic. Public health technology and data systems were far behind the times. When daily COVID-19 illness, hospitalization and death counts were urgently needed, some systems were counting deaths by means of faxed PDFs, with little integration between hospitals and county offices. In Dallas County, what was urgently needed to cope with the pandemic has turned into infrastructure equipped to address a much wider range of conditions and challenges.
The scope and ambition of the modernization effort Huang has led is unusual at the local level, says Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a group that gathers the largest local health departments. Huang has not only brought Dallas County up to date but travels the country offering assistance to other jurisdictions looking to upgrade their own systems. The pandemic prompted an influx of funding for public health infrastructure, but Huang is concerned that political controversies could hinder commitments over the long term. “If COVID didn’t show that we need that, I don’t know what will,” he says.
Huang, who is 63, originally intended to be a family physician. When a medical school rotation in global health took him to a remote mountain village in Nepal, he began to imagine other possibilities. An adviser suggested he might want to add a public health degree to his training. An infectious disease professor alerted him to an epidemic intelligence service program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “I loved family medicine and the clinical work, but I was also drawn to having a broader impact,” Huang says.
Along with his medical degree, Huang earned a master’s in public health and then spent two years doing epidemiologic research at the CDC. He took his first job as a public health official in his home state of Texas, as chief of the health department’s Bureau of Chronic Disease and Tobacco Prevention. He served as medical director for Austin and Travis County for a decade before moving to Dallas County almost exactly a year before the pandemic.
An accomplished trumpeter, Huang has played in brass choirs, Dixieland bands and orchestras. Being in a musical group teaches people to work together for a common goal, he says. This sense of harmony may be a factor in the “sober, simple and straightforward” pandemic messaging that D Magazine praised him for back in 2022.
His national and even international perspectives only enhance Huang’s appreciation of the vital role of county systems. Huang has been building up his department’s outreach to ensure that those most at risk know how to access help, including social services that address disparities that undermine health.
“Sometimes there’s sort of a feeling of superiority from some of the higher levels toward these more local levels,” Huang says, “but I’ve truly come to appreciate that everything really is local.”
Find more information about the Public Officials of the Year here.
