272962 Uptake of Emergency Preparedness Training at the Local Level: The Train Experience

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 : 10:30 AM - 10:50 AM

James H. Bellamy, CNMT, MPH , Division of Nuclear Medicine Imaging Sciences, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR
Assuring a competent public health workforce (PHWF) is one of the ten essential services of public health. Emergency preparedness (PHEP) has become a key competency for the PHWF. In response to the need for PHEP training, the Public Health Foundation 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. Three data sources are used: the 2005 and 2008 NACCHO surveys, and data from TRAIN. NACCHO's questionnaire contains questions related to discretionary PHEP activities. TRAIN data provides individual-level data including course name/ID, county, job/role, organization, and work setting. The first set of analyses includes descriptive and cross-sectional measures of participation in discretionary EP activities by local public health agencies in 2005 and 2008. The second set of analyses includes the longitudinal effects of training using fixed and/or random effects models to account for autocorrelation. Longitudinal analyses examine changes in PHEP and response capacities by LHDs. 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. To our knowledge, this is the first time TRAIN data was used to measure the uptake of PHEP training.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership

Learning Objectives:
Discuss trends in public health emergency preparedness training Discuss the effect of TRAIN modules on Local Health Department capacity for responding to emergencies

Keywords: Professional Development, Disasters

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As an Assitant Professor at the University of Arkansas I deal daily with the training of health care professionals. My competitively funded research on training for emergency preparedness among public health practitioners provides the back bone of this presentation.
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.