Impact of public health leadership training on workforce competencies

The public health workforce has recently been overburdened by funding cuts, preparedness needs, and increasing chronic diseases. Such systemic concerns can be addressed by implementing empirically validated competencies that provide standards for appropriate practice. Competency assessments allow training impact upon practitioner knowledge, skills, and abilities to be quantified. To meet urban and rural health needs in the state of Kansas, the Kansas Public Health Leadership Institute (KPHLI) has implemented competency-based practitioner training. KPHLI scholars were given two assessments pre and post training: the Public Health Core Competency Assessment, developed by the Council on Linkages, and the Public Health Leadership Competency Assessment, developed by the National Public Health Leadership Development Network. Inferential statistics were calculated using SPSS/PC 14.0. Post training, scholars demonstrated statistically significant improvements in all public health core competency domains and all public health leadership competency domains. No statistically significant differences were found between the competency increases of urban scholars and rural scholars, indicating that the program meets the needs of public health workers from all population density stratifications. The KPHLI training program, as evidenced by the increased competencies of its participants, significantly impacts the knowledge, skills, and abilities of public health workers in Kansas. Similar combinations of competency assessments can be used to quantify the benefits of public health leadership training across the nation and to ensure that programs appropriately train specific demographics in preparation for eventual state-wide systems of standardization and accreditation.