223103 Innovative Approaches to Strengthening Emergency Preparedness Competencies among Public Health Workers in Western Wisconsin

Monday, November 8, 2010 : 1:30 PM - 1:50 PM

Jay Shrader, MHA , Public Health, Western Region Partnership for Public Health Preparedness, Balsam Lake, WI
Brian Kaczmarski , Public Health, Western Region Partnership for Public Health Preparedness, Balsam Lake, WI
     
Since 2001, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has allocated significant funds to State and local public health agencies (LPHAs) to increase capacity and competency to respond to various public health incidents. Nine years later the readiness of local public health agencies to respond to emergencies is still widely unknown primarily due to the wide variations of how competency development is assessed, implemented, tracked, and evaluated nationwide. Understanding the issues facing local public health agencies in emergency readiness competency development, the Western Region Partnership for Public Health Preparedness, a twenty member local public health agency emergeny preparedness consortium in Western Wisconsin, initiated a multi-layered competency development improvement process. The process included: 1) retrospective research conducted in 2008 of 235 public health workers in the region to identify factors related to work, worker, and work setting that influenced competency development 2) an objective based web-based emergency readiness competency assessment in 2009 of 375 public health workers that tested public health workers knowledge and skills of the region's public health emergency plan 3) analysis of the assessment data to identify individual, agency, and regional level tranining needs 4) development of a website specifically for emergency readiness competency development that intefaces individual, agency, and regional competency development plans 5) competency development efforts focused on short, concise, web-based trainings and 6) annual reassessment of emergency readiness competencies for the region's entire public health workforce.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Protection of the public in relation to communicable diseases including prevention or control
Public health administration or related administration

Learning Objectives:
1. Describe local public health agency challenges and opportunities to developing a competent - ready public health workforce. 2. Explain work, worker, or work setting factors that might explain or predict competency development in the local public health workforce. 3. Identify low cost information technology systems that maximize competency development participation among the local public health workforce. 4. Describe the importance of aligning competency development with trainings, exercises or drills, and planning and policy.

Keywords: Competency, Emergency

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the Director of the Western Region Partnership for Public Health Preparedness and facilitator of the data which will be discussed in this session.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3215.0: Workforce Development I