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Supporting Frontline Technology's Role in Workforce Health and Wellbeing

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Advanced technology plays a pivotal role in supporting frontline workforce health and wellbeing by providing tools for real-time communication, workload management, and safety monitoring. Innovative solutions, such as wearable devices and mental health platforms, empower frontline workers with resources to maintain resilience and perform their duties effectively under demanding conditions.

  • Peter Jaquez, Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner, Enterprise Services, CBP
  • Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS
  • Chip Fulghum, former DHS Deputy Under Secretary for Management (moderator)

This discussion took place at the HSDF’s Border Security Symposium on December 11th, 2024 

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• Chip Fulghum, former DHS Deputy Under Secretary for Management (moderator):

All right, thanks, megan. So we'll get right to it. Herb, I'll start with you. Can you share a little bit about the Office of Health Security? You know where it came from, where it is today and where you'd like to see it go. Health security you know where it came from, where it is today and where you'd like to see it go.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

Yep, sure, good afternoon. Thanks for having me here. So we created OHS in July of 2022. We're about two and a half years old Listen for folks that are in here from CBP and others.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

We're a very small office 109 people total and a budget roughly around $80 million, so relatively agile and nimble Few priorities for the office. One is to not be another layer, but to actually be an operational sort of what I would call from the DOD, a combat support agency or what we call a mission support agency. For the rest of the components, that entails several things. One is we are hiring people who are smart because they've got advanced medical degrees, veterinary degrees, social science degrees. I mean we hire them to be the best and brightest to either take care of the workforce, take care of migrants, develop an electronic health record or keep the country safe. So that's the first thing we do. Two is we've hired a lot of technology folks to figure out how we can do an electronic health record. That doesn't go the way of the early steps of Coast Guard, which they struggled, which doesn't go the way of the Department of Veterans Affairs, who struggled. For some of our industry colleagues, those struggles often mean additional money. The challenge is money is not easy to come by and so we're trying to find a way to do it with the best of breed, the best of show for electronic health records, but not also try to bankrupt the department.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

When I tell you we're 80 million a year you look at every other department or agency they spend potentially all their money is on electronic health record I probably cry at every senior leadership. That can be bad. It is really good when you want people to come along with you. It's really bad when everybody's a green suitor and they've got a gun and they're like who's this guy we hired in the department. That's crying at every. But I will tell you folks being able to be out and around our team and the great people that we have. It is hard not to be emotional when you hear their personal stories, not just from the work they're doing for us, but their time as a veteran, but you, but their time as a veteran. But you also can hear their stories about family, their spouses, and so I tell people.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

Sometimes people do talk to the health folks in a more confident setting, in a more confident manner and also in a confidential manner, and it's great for me to hear these stories from our employees, and so the impetus behind it, chip, was everybody's doing great work, but how can we coalesce this? And the last thing, the important thing was who's going to be talking to the secretary every day about keeping this a priority? You'll hear me mention in a minute this. Last year was the first time that law enforcement was on a secretary's priority budget issue team and I'm going to talk to you when the question comes up what did that mean for the department? And I think when I give you some positions, some numbers, you'll totally sort of agree that that is part of it. Last reason for the office was sometimes you're chief medical officer and it's one person.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

The goal here was not to have one person. I will say a few things about the department that I'm passionate about. One is I think we're the only CMO left where you have to be a physician. That's sort of a bygone era. You can be a Navy SG, an Army SG, you can be an Air Force Surgeon General. You can be a nurse, you can be a pharmacist, you can be a PA, you can be a nurse practitioner.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

Our goal here is also to modernize the department and bring us along to where everybody's at, and if that means at some point in time I do myself out of a job, that's okay by me. But the goal here is to modernize my view on the world is medical probably shouldn't be buried in a custody contract. We probably need to have a health services contract that everybody clearly knows the impetus is health care, it's mental health, it's physical health. And then we need to talk about the other data points that are harder to come by, which is not just health data Use of annual leave, use of sick leave, requests for reasonable accommodations, those statistics when they change when a new leader arrives. We all love Pete, but what if Pete leaves and Herb comes and Herb's not the great guy that Pete was, and all of a sudden everybody at the sector is taking leave. They're asking for reasonable accommodation. Could be Herb has a leadership problem.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

Somebody needs to gather that data. We have it, but we need to look at it probably more in a macro sense. We don't want to narrow it down to like you know, you are putting in leave and you and Herb don't get along, but the answer is you and your colleagues have changed your view of work and you've either asked for reasonable accommodation, you've asked for a reassignment. You've, and we need to figure out how we can gather data. So it's not just help data, it's the whole spectrum of data.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

Every one of them, when you get to meet them one-on-one, embraces me and the team. What we've got to do is do that in a venue that isn't just the one-on-one, where they're not comfortable talking to Herb and my team in a small room. I will tell you change is coming. When I go through an airport now, tsa folks know when I'm coming and they find me and they'll say things like my floor mat is wore down, my microwave doesn't work, poor. Dave Pekoski is like Herb stop traveling through airports. But the goal here is they may seem little to each one of you, but if you're working eight-hour shift checking IDs, the fact that your mat hasn't been replaced is the number one thing on your mind, because when you get home, you're not engaging your kids because you're working with back pain for two or three hours.

• Dr. Herbert Wolfe, Acting Chief Medical Officer, DHS:

And so I think it's the message. It's us working together as a unified team. It's you all being a partner with us and telling us what you've done for other people so we don't need to reinvent the wheel. And then it's also leveraging industry. But also we've got to meet our employees where they're at. We've got the southern border down, we've got a northern border, we've got interior communities, we've got airports that are nowhere near a border and we got a lot of employees. We got Malibu. Right now We've got FEMA folks that are preparing to go to another disaster. The resources for them have to go with them. They can't go to El Paso or San Antonio. They got to have them with them.

• Chip Fulghum, former DHS Deputy Under Secretary for Management (moderator):

So I'll just close by saying you know I spent seven years in the department and you know where it was then. By the way, did you notice Herb mentioned, rattled off, several things that I was responsible for? That didn't go well. But that's neither here nor there, Herb. But what I'll tell you is from my view you know, way out in Texas now, looking in the department has come miles in terms of what it does for its workforce and how it cares deeply for its workforce. And that doesn't happen by accident. It requires hard work and leadership, and the leadership of CBP, the leadership of Herb and the department is evidenced and I think the workforce sees that. So, on behalf of the nation that's out there, we owe you a debt of thanks for what you're doing every day and your focus on the care of those who are protecting us. So, on behalf of all of them, thank you for what you're doing and thank you guys for being here. Thank you.