Susan Lepre, PhD, Research Unit, Division of Family Guidance, Dept. of Human Services Co. of Bergen, 1 Bergen Plaza, Hackensack, NJ 07601-7076, 201-336-7378, slepre@co.bergen.nj.us and Susan Meyer, MPA, Research, Bergen County Department of Human Services, 327 East Ridgewood Avenue, Paramus, NJ 07652-4895.

A 2003 report by the Institute of Medicine on the future of public health in the 21-st century highlighted a severe shortage regarding the size of the public health workforce. Particularly understaffed are local and county health departments throughout the US who compete with other health employers like hospitals and pharmaceutical companies for trained public health workers. Developing employees with new technical skills to replace an aging public health workforce is critical. Health crises such as bioterrorism and emerging new diseases like SARS demand that new MPH graduates have the requisite technical skills and, equally as important, choose employment in the local public health system.

The US as well as NJ has adopted new performance standards for public health agencies to address this. The call has been to improve workforce preparation at all levels of the public health system: federal, state and local within the next 5 years.

To strengthen the linkage between academia and practice the Bergen County (NJ) Department of Health Services created a unit in August 2002 supervised by a full-time public health PhD. The output of this unit includes but is not limited to the following: training of 6 MPHs from schools of public health, and 1 undergraduate who completed an internship in community health. The unit, in addition, was spotlighted in The Nation’s Health and one student submitted a scientific paper to a national conference. Linkages with three schools of public health were also achieved.

Learning Objectives: