Using technology and partnerships across academic and practice agencies to promote a lifelong learning infrastructure in public health

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Lisa Macon Harrison, BSPH, MPH(c), Erin E. Rothney, MPH, Jennifer A. Horney, MA, MPH, and Pia D.M. MacDonald, PhD, MPH. North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campus Box 8165, 400 Roberson, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, 919-843-5559, lisa_harrison@unc.edu

The North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness at the North Carolina Institute for Public Health is working with 15 local health departments to create, implement, and evaluate collaborative models of education and training for local public health workers. This session will focus on the differences among these models of lifelong learning and lessons learned from local health department experiences of practice/academic partnerships.

Competencies are being developed in different areas of public health with no clear standard on how to tie them to knowledge, skills, and abilities. This session is relevant and timely to both local and state public health practice as it deals with the emerging concerns around public health preparedness training for the workforce and connecting competencies to skills.

The lifelong learning initiative uses an online self assessment in preparedness and core public health competencies to identify training needs, and then match those needs to available continuing education opportunities in preparedness and core public health skills. A learning management system is used for developing individual training plans and tracking training over time. This presentation features examples of training programs that have incorporated competency-matched trainings across multiple occupations from 15 local public health departments in North Carolina.

The lifelong learning initiative for public health in North Carolina includes personal career development for individual staff members, skill development in an actively functioning health department, and improvement of the relationship among the agency, local resources, and the University of North Carolina School of Public Health.

Learning Objectives:

The learner should be able to

1. Recognize ways to enhance the capacity of local health agencies to function as learning organizations through active partnerships, identified support structures, and meaningful incentives for the local public health workforce.
2. Identify elements of successful training programs and realize new approaches to overcome old barriers to public health workforce training.
3. Identify examples of training needs and be familiar with efficient methods to meet learning preferences of adult full-time public health workers.

Keywords: Partnerships, Technology

Related Web page: www.sph.unc.edu/nccphp/lifelonglearning

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation

Utilizing Technology in Health Promotion Practice

The 134th Annual Meeting & Exposition (November 4-8, 2006) of APHA