Strengthening Public Health Systems and Services Through National Partnerships to Improve and Protect the Nation's Health - Assessment and Capacity Building for Local-Level Public Health Workforce Recruitment and Retention - Category: A - Governmental Public Health Departments Population of Focus: Local Public Health Departments The Consortium for Workforce Research in Public Health (CWORPH), led by the University of Minnesota, will work to improve the performance of local governmental health departments (LHDs) through assessment and capacity-building assistance in the strategic areas of Workforce and Organizational Capacity & Performance Improvement. CWORPH is the only national research Consortium that focuses specifically on the public health workforce. It brings together academic and public health partners to conduct the rigorous analysis required to ensure a well-trained public health workforce ready for both chronic and acute public health needs. In Year 1, Principal Investigators from three of the six CWORPH members - University of Minnesota, Indiana University, and Johns Hopkins University - will conduct three projects to achieve this aim. In the context of the changing landscape and needs for the public health workforce, our work over the five years will generally focus on workforce recruitment and retention and on strengthening organizational capacity and competencies of LHDs. We will develop actionable tools for LHDs to employ evidence-based strategies to support workforce need. In particular, our purpose and aim is to will identify and assess workforce gaps, training, and educational needs; develop and facilitate the use of standards and best practices for public health training and workforce development programs; and support change management and efforts to sustain, improve, or modify organizational structures or processes to meet needs or address efficiencies. Our expected outcomes are 1) Increased availability of and access to capacity-building assistance (CBA) services and products that address our strategic areas of focus (short-term); 2) Increased awareness of best/promising practices and/or tools by LHDs of CBA services and products (medium-term); and 3) Increased use of CBA services and products by LHDs (long-term). Initial work will focus on assessing how health departments are and can use existing workforce findings. Proposed projects for Year 1 are: 1. Burnout Mitigation as Retention 2. Building the capacity of community-based workers in LHDs 3. Supporting Assessment of LHDs’ Workforce Capacities and Costs Related to the Foundational Public Health Services (FPHS) In years 2-5, depending CDC’s direction, we would plan to support additional studies along the lines of Workforce and Organizational Capacity & Performance Improvement through both Funding Strategies 1 and 2. CDC has not announced the Funding Strategy 2 projects, but we do expect that they would fund work in similar strategic areas.
