Using academic and practice partnerships to leverage funding toward a sustainable future: Local and state perspectives on workforce development for voluntary accreditation

Major national initiatives such as the National Prevention Strategy and Affordable Care Act call for expanded public health worker skill sets. Yet, local health department (LHD) capacity to address these changes is limited. Voluntary public health accreditation offers health departments the opportunity to meet these challenges, but more support is needed to help health departments prepare for and respond to accreditation standards. Academic and practice relationships can leverage resources and enhance health departments' readiness for accreditation by providing technical assistance for workforce development. This presentation will describe the work of an academic/practice partnership – UIC School of Public Health MidAmerica Center for Public Health Practice, Illinois Department of Public Health, and three local health departments (LHDs) – to design tools to enhance LHDs' readiness for accreditation in a cost-effective manner. The partners' work will also promote dialogue about workforce development infrastructure in Illinois. With funding from the NACCHO Accreditation Support Initiative, the partners convened a workgroup to: 1) write a report on factors shaping workforce development for accreditation, 2) assess worker competencies at the three partner LHDs, 3) develop workforce training plans for each LHD, and 4) create an online toolkit for competency assessment, workforce development planning, and training resources. The ASI workgroup's report will inform statewide policy discussions and may lead to new strategies to strengthen statewide infrastructure around workforce development. The online toolkit will offer a practical, step-by-step guide for how to assess worker competencies, create training plans, and train LHDs workers. Lessons learned will be shared too.