10 Essential Public Health Services

8. WORKFORCE

Build and support a diverse, skilled public health workforce

Population health relies on a large, capable, diverse, and culturally competent Public Health workforce. The Public Health workforce comprises workers across many professions and in dozens of subfields. Workforce development and expansion helps Public Health meet current and future community health needs. Partnerships with academia, professional training programs, and nontraditional learning institutions can build a pipeline for the Public Health workforce.

Equity & Systems

Transforming systems for equity requires diversifying the public health workforce and growing workforce competencies to address health inequities. Priorities include:

  • Diversifying public health leadership
  • Hiring community health and outreach workers who live in the communities they serve
  • Developing workforce competencies to address health inequities

Public Health in Action

Public Health is challenged to re-align its skills and capacities to meet demands of the day. COVID-19 shined a light on our need to strengthen the Public Health workforce. In response, Public Health has pursued various strategies to attract and retain talent, which include developing pipeline models, providing tuition reimbursement and scholarships, and retraining workers from other fields into Public Health jobs.

    Priorities

    Recruit and retain public health workers

    Diversify the public health workforce

    Skill up the workforce in systems thinking, data science, communication, and policy evaluation

    Reflection Questions

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    • What additional strategies could be effective in recruiting, retraining, and/or upskilling the Public Health workforce?
    • How can Public Health advance equity while building a skilled public health workforce?
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