YPHI: Creating public health leaders in the WiFi generation

According to national estimates, more than 20 to 25% of the current public health workforce will be eligible for retirement this year (2010). Public health systems (local, state, federal) arguably have an urgent need to ensure a competent public health workforce and should further explore innovative opportunities to create sustainable public health pipeline programs that engage secondary, post-secondary, graduate academic institutions as well as professional practitioners in the public and private sectors. For more than 10 years, the Metro Public Health Department has invested in pipeline programs to engage potential public health professionals at all levels (e.g. high school, undergraduate, graduate, and professional). The 2010 Youth Public Health Institute (YPHI), supported under a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Association of Schools of Public Health, is designed to increase knowledge and awareness of post-secondary career and academic pathways to public health (PH) opportunities for more than 1,050 public high school students and their health science educators with collaboration between public and private academic institutions and the local public health system. Guided by local PH graduate students and professionals, it is reasonably anticipated that 100% of YPHI enrollees will demonstrate an increase in public health knowledge and career opportunities as well as 100% of their educators will create and teach public health lesson plans for their classrooms, strengthening the community's overall PH awareness. The longitudinal implications include potential replicable pipelines directly into the local workforce and undergraduate/graduate public health training programs.