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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Sylvia Pirani, MPH, MS, Director, Office of Local Health Services, NYS Department of Health, Corning Tower, Rm. 821, ESP, Albany, NY 12237, 518-473-4223, sjp03@health.state.ny.us, Joan Pivorun-Wehrle, MS, MBA, Training Coordinator, Office of Local Health Services, NYS Department of Health, Corning Tower, Rm. 821, ESP, Albany, NY 12237, Marita Murrman, EdD, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 West 168th St., Room 914, New York, NY 10032, Lauren Porsch, MPH, School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W. 168th Street, 9th floor, New York, NY 10032, and Guthrie S. Birkhead, MD, MPH, Director, Center for Community Health, NYS Department of Health, Corning Tower, 14th floor, ESP, Albany, NY 12237.

Attention to public health workforce development is essential to ensure that there are sufficient trained public health professionals entering and remaining in the work force and that continuing education is accessible, encouraged, relevant and linked to core competencies. The New York State (NYS) Public Health Council's 2003 report, Strengthening New York's Public Health System for the 21st Century, called on the state to convene a public health training task force to consider issues of access, competency based training, leadership and public health career curricula at schools and colleges. In 2005, the NYS Department of Health joined with the New York New Jersey Public Health Training Center to convene a partnership to consider public health workforce issues. The Task Force includes academia, state and local health department representatives and professional health care organizations. It developed a Roadmap, and accompanying action plans, for strengthening the state's public health workforce that includes priority strategies and activities being initiated to achieve goals in four priority workforce areas: leadership, recruitment, education and training, and retention. The model developed by NYS and its partners can easily be adapted for use by other local or state health departments.

Learning Objectives: