Year: 2013
Funding: Jr Investigator Award
Status: Completed
The principal objective of this proposal is to determine how the size and composition of the state and local public health workforce varies over time by state and community types. This study uses workforce data from multiple sources, including the NACCHO National Profile of Local Health Departments (2010-2013), and the ASTHO Profile of State Public Health (2010-2012). The research methodology was a secondary data analysis, which allowed the development of a profile of the workforce by occupational categories. Trends of aggregated workforce characteristics by regions of states, governance structure, and state population size were analyzed using descriptive statistics. These results should enable public health officials and policy makers to get a sense of how the distribution of their workforce has changed over time and how it compares to the workforce composition in regions with similar characteristics, which could lead to better information about staffing patterns in state and local health departments nationwide.
Researcher
Mentor
Matthew Boulton, M.D., M.P.H.
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Presentations
- Trends and Characteristics of the State Public Health Workforce (Poster presentation, PHSSR Keeneland Conference, April 2014)
- Trends and Characteristics of the State and Local Public Health Workforce (PHSSR Research in Progress Webinar, November 2014 recording)
Publications
- Trends and Characteristics of the State and Local Public Health Workforce, 2010–2013 (AJPH, 2015)
Related Publications
- Promoting practice in public health academia: assessing impact on student education (JPHMP, May-June 2013)
- Challenges to recruitment and retention of the state health department epidemiology workforce (AJPM, January 2012)
- Building an effective workforce: a systematic review of public health workforce literature (AJPM, May 2012)
- Assessment of epidemiology capacity in state health departments, 2004-2009 (Public Health Reports, November-December 2010)
- Mapping student response team activities to public health competencies: are we adequately preparing the next generation of public health practitioners? (Public Health Reports, November-December 2010)