Future of public workforce training: thought leaders' perspectives.

The guest editors identified eleven prominent public health thought leaders from practice, academia, professional associations, and philanthropic organizations to be interviewed for their opinions about the future of public health, the skills needed by the public health workforce, and training opportunities and roles. While they spoke from many different perspectives, several overarching themes emerged. The public health workforce needs updated skills. Public health academia should be more engaged in educating and training for public health practice, which would also benefit academia. There is a sense that "now is the time" for public health to be an essential player in the health care system. They see promise in emerging activities such as accreditation, practice-based research, and an explicit national agenda for workforce training. Overall, they are cautiously optimistic about the potential for greater real and perceived value of public health, momentum for more comprehensive, and coordinated public health training.

Charting a course to competency: an approach to mapping public health core competencies to existing trainings.

Consistent with other professional fields, the goals of public health training have moved from a focus on knowledge transfer to the development of skills or competencies. At least six national competency sets have been developed in the past decade pertaining to public health professionals. State and local public health agencies are increasingly using competency sets as frameworks for staff development and assessment. Mapping competencies to training has potential for enhancing the value of public health training during resource-constrained times by directly linking training content to the desired skills. For existing public health trainings, the challenge is how to identify competencies addressed in those courses in a manner that is not burdensome and that produces valid results. This article describes a process for mapping competencies to the learning objectives, assignments, and assessments of existing trainings. The process presented could be used by any training center or organization that seeks to connect public health workforce competencies to previously developed instruction. Public health practice can be strengthened more effectively if trainings can be selected for the desired practice skills or competencies.

Using public health legal counsel effectively: beliefs, barriers and opportunities for training.

Effective use of public health law can be a powerful tool to advance the mission of public health departments to protect and promote the health of the population. However, there is little known about the way that public health officials think about law, use law, and/or interact with their legal counsel. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the beliefs and barriers facing public health officials and legal counsel in their efforts to collaborate and to describe specific opportunities to better facilitate the use of law and collaboration, particularly in the area of training and education. Our findings are based on two studies: (1) a mixed methods study of state and local public health officials and their legal counsel, including surveys and qualitative interviews; and (2) a survey-based needs assessment of training for public health law. While state health officials and legal counsel view the role of public health law in similar ways, variation exists in organization, interactions and perceptions of collaboration on issues of public health law. Tremendous opportunity exists for improving collaboration between legal counsel and public health agencies through additional education and training opportunities. Improving the use of law in public health is possible - if practitioners and legal educators work together to fulfill its promise.

Community health indicators for the Washington metropolitan region

This report presents comparable health indicator data for nine United States jurisdictions with data organized along the lines of the Leading Health Indicators in Healthy People 2010. The report reveals that overall the adult population of the Washington metropolitan area is healthier than the nation. On some measures the region appears less healthy than the nation: AIDS, gonorrhea, and other STDs, tuberculosis, binge drinking and firearm-related deaths, an infant mortality and low birth weight.