Effectively evaluating federal public health fellowship programs focused on workforce and health impact

The public health system at all levels must make a concerted effort to attract and retain the best public health workers to address the growing gap in the public health workforce. While schools of public health, social work, and other related fields, serve as a great suppliers of educated and qualified public health professionals, fellowship programs also have a key role to place in providing people with frontline, work experience that will inform the rest of their careers. However, it is critical that these programs be properly evaluated, just as would any public health program. This presentation will provide an overview of the development and implementation of a comprehensive program evaluation for a federally funded fellowship program. The presentation will highlight the key considerations, the components of the evaluation, the key stakeholders, barriers to measure development and reporting, and lessons learned for future evaluation development.

With such a comprehensive program evaluation can we effectively measure the impact of the curriculum developed to train the participants, and measure the impact of their learning and their work on the state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments where they served. The end goal of such a program and the evaluation, is to make a demonstrable impact on the future public health workforce, and equip the participants with the knowledge and skills to develop lifelong careers in public health, with the vital experience of working in the state and local health departments.