Factors related to perceived training needs among a hispanic public health workforce

Background: Maintaining a highly trained, culturally sensitive public health workforce must include assessment of training needs and agile development of public health training opportunities. The Puerto Rico-Florida Public Health Training Center aims to fill this challenge for workforce development. Objectives: Identify predicting factors of public health competencies-based training needs among personnel of San Juan Department of Health (SJ-DOH) in Puerto Rico. Methods: A cross-sectional survey assessed demographic characteristics and information about public health experience and perceived training needs of employees (n=441; 48% response rate) from SJ-DOH. The questionnaire assessed training needs in 32 Public Health competencies (Council on Linkages). Logistic regression analyses were used to estimate the 95% confidence Prevalence Odds Ratio (POR). Results: Predicting factors varied by the Public Health competency domain assessed. Employees with master's level studies or higher were less likely of needing training in analytical skills (POR = 0.063, 95%CI: 0.014, 0.286), and communication competencies (POR = 0.065, 95%CI: 0.013, 0.319). Employees indicating advanced public health knowledge were less likely to need training in Policy Development / Program Planning (POR = 0.089, 95% CI: 0.015, 0.529), and Cultural Sensitivity (POR = 0.037, 95% CI: 0.004, 0.331). Those with poor computer literacy were more likely to need training in Policy Development / Program Planning (POR = 2.52, 95% CI: 1,025, 6,185). Conclusions: These findings show that strategies for workforce development must be tailored to trainees' characteristics such as public health knowledge, experience and computer literacy. A competent public health workforce is essential for a better performance.