Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #106001

Lisa Macon Harrison, BSPH, MPH (c)¹, Erin E. Rothney, MPH¹, Jennifer A. Horney, MPH¹, and Pia D.M. MacDonald, PhD, MPH². (1) North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campus Box 8165, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8165, 919-843-5559, lisa_harrison@unc.edu, (2) Department of Epidemiology / North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campus Box 8165, Chapel Hill, NC 27599

This presentation will review how priority training needs differed across various public health workers in North Carolina and will discuss the development of training plans at the individual, occupational, and regional levels. In local public health departments across North Carolina, 6482 of 8306 public health workers (78%) completed a workforce training needs assessment. The assessment identified individual, occupational, and regional training needs that were used to inform training plan development. Individual training plans were created as part of an online learning management system for each person who completed the online assessment. Individual training plans connect and prioritize each participant's assessment answers with more than 300 competency-matched trainings in an online database. Especially notable were differences in training needs across occupational classifications including public health administrator, public health nurse, environmental health specialist, clerical and administrative employees, health educators, managers and policy analysts, clinicians and epidemiologists, nutritionists, social work and mental health specialists among others. Training plans were developed for these groups by bundling a series of online trainings to address each group's priority training needs as indicated by assessment data. In addition, local health departments and Public Health Regional Surveillance Team (PHRST) leaders received assessment reports to facilitate regional and agency-based training plan development. Training plans for agencies and regions were developed in collaboration with key informants to ensure feasibility of training plan implementation. A variety of different types of training plans have been developed to more effectively address the priority training needs in preparedness and core public health competencies.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, learners will be able to

• Identify the composition of the public health workforce in North Carolina overall, by occupation, and by region.
• Prioritize training needs in emergency preparedness and core public health competencies.
• Recognize strategies for implementing competency-based training plans for individual public health workers, local health departments, regions, and occupational groups.

Keywords: Training, Workforce

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation