2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo

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Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

326529
An Effective Training Partnership: New Mexico Public Health Learning Collaborative


Monday, November 2, 2015

Kristine Tollestrup, PhD, MPH, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Susan C. Forster-Cox, PhD, MPH, MCHES, Dept. of Public Health Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM
Stephanie Jackson, MPH, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Shannon Barnes, MS, Office of Policy and Accountability, New Mexico Department of Health, Santa Fe, NM
Christina Perea, New Mexico Department of Health, Santa Fe, NM
Giovanna Rossi, Msc, Collective Action Strategies, LLC, Albuquerque, NM
Tres Schnell, New Mexico Department of Health, Santa Fe
Background:  The New Mexico Public Health Learning Collaborative (NMPHLC) is an innovative approach to training the public health workforce in a large, rural state.  Members of the NMPHLC include faculty from the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University, and public health practitioners from the New Mexico Department of Health and other public health agencies.  

Methods:  Faculty from the two universities created three all day workshops and an online course to address the training needs of the state’s public health workforce.  The topics of the workshop included:  Introduction to Public Health, Assessment in Public Health, and Program Planning in Public Health. These workshops were offered at several locations throughout the state and were provided at no cost.  A train-the-trainer session was also offered for the Introduction to Public Health workshop.  Competencies were selected from the Council on Linkages between Academia and Public Health Practice's Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals.  Pre- and post-assessments were administered to all respondents.

Results:  A total of 565 participants were trained at 36 workshops, including five with tribal members, over a two-year time period.  Overall, workshops participants reported an increase in their ability to do the stated competency after the workshop was completed.  On average, participants moved up almost one level in their stated ability to effectively do the competency after completing the workshop.

Conclusions:  This collaborative partnership provided an effective means to train public health workers by combining the expertise of academic faculty with that of public health practitioners.

Learning Areas:

Public health or related education

Learning Objectives:
Describe the key components of an effective partnership to train the public health workforce in a large, rural state. Discuss the approaches to evaluating the success of the workshops at improving the level of competency of the participants.

Keyword(s): Professional Development, Public Health Curricula & Competencies

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the director of the Public Health Program at the University of New Mexico and have taught public health students for 30 years. As principal investigator on a grant funded by CDC through the NM Department of Health, I collaborated with New Mexico State University to create statewide in-person workshops to train public health workers throughout the state.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3191.0: Academic Public Health Caucus Poster Session I