Development of a center of excellence in public health workforce studies

In September 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided seed funding to establish the Center of Excellence in Public Health Workforce Studies (CEPHS) at the University of Michigan School of Public Health through a cooperative agreement with the Public Health Foundation. The mission of CEPHS is to develop programmatic activities and research projects in support of CDC's goal to provide public health decision makers with the scientific research necessary to support coordinated, systematic, empirically driven, evidence-based, public health workforce and career development planning, program, and policy efforts. These efforts will help ensure a competent, diverse, sustainable, and prepared public health workforce necessary to improving health outcomes. The Center's broad goal will focus on identifying and assessing measures of public health capacity and further development of analytic, quantifiable conceptual models of public health workforce.

Partnerships with national public health organizations are critical to the success of the Center of Excellence. Since its inception, CEPHS has worked closely with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, a relationship that has resulted in the publication of technical reports and manuscripts characterizing and assessing the capacity of the national epidemiology workforce in state health departments. In addition, CEPHS has formed a partnership with the National Association of County and City Health Officials to analyze workforce data collected as part of the National Profile of Local Health Departments. Future projects include developing and describing capacity measures for other sectors of the public health workforce such as laboratorians, environmental health workers, health educators, and public health physicians; and exploring the contribution of the workforce in community-based public health organizations to the delivery of public health services in Michigan.