Learning from innovation in social work training: How public health can help prepare its graduates to meet needs of a growing older adult population

Public health and social work education share many basic values—mutual commitments to social improvement, interdisciplinary knowledge base, preventive measures, and professional exposure via “real world” experiences. In the face of an increasing older adult population, both fields have developed specializations in aging, yet a shortage of students entering this workforce persists. Public health education typically offers coursework to educate students about older adult issues, including practical skills application in a public health setting. Social work programs, however, may be doing more to address the workforce shortage by training students in rigorously structured, multi-level “real world” settings. The New York Academy of Medicine's Social Work Leadership Institute thus developed the Practicum Partnership Program (PPP) with funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation. The PPP aims to bolster the social work workforce by dispensing seed grants to master's level social work schools, who then apply this rotation-based field education model to expose students to a spectrum of aging-related careers. Since 1999, this program has trained 500+ social workers; 1-2 years post-graduation, nearly 80% were employed in aging. As a student trained in both fields, this paper will explore what public health can learn from social work relative to this model, and will apply a public health framework to learning components of the PPP. A macro-review of site grants and reports will be used to summarize strong aspects of the program; potential benefits and limitations of adopting the PPP model for public health education will be discussed.