Uptake of Emergency Preparedness Training at the Local Level: The TRAIN Experience

Assuring a competent public health and personal health workforce is one of the ten essential services of public health. In recent years public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) has become a key competency for the public health workforce. In response, the Public Health Foundation (PHF) established a web-based learning management tool – TRAIN (TrainingFinder Real-time Affiliated Integrated Network). This study will investigate the effects of PHEP training for local health department (LHD) employees on the preparedness and response capacities of their LHDs. The 2005/2008 National Profile of Local Health Departments (NACCHO) and training data from the TRAIN database are the data sources. NACCHO's local profile surveys contain questions related to emergency preparedness (EP) activities. The TRAIN data provides the individual-level data on PHEP training and educational activities. Analyses will include descriptive and cross-sectional measures of participation in EP activities by LHDs in 2005 and 2008. Additional analysis will include examining the longitudinal effects of EP training from 2005 to 2008 using fixed and/or random effects models. From previous studies, we anticipate that participation in EP activities will show wide variability. However, we anticipate that LHDs with increased levels of training will demonstrate higher levels of EP activities participation than LHDs with lower training levels. This project provides a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of training on local public health emergency preparedness and response capacities on a national scale. Additionally, as far as we know, this is the first time TRAIN data will be used to measure the uptake of EP training.