Filling the Gap: The Role of Philanthropy in the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey

Public health workforce research is characterized by enumeration studies and a focus on institutional characteristics.  Enumeration studies have contributed information about the size and composition of the public health workforce. However, these studies often lack comparable data across different areas of public health and different employers within public health.  The ASTHO and NACCHO profile surveys provide vital information about the state of the public health workforce but only from an institutional perspective. 

Public health workforce researchers have called for more data on individual worker’s perceptions about workplace environment, job satisfaction, and training needs for a quarter of a century.  However, this critical information gap persisted.  This created a unique opportunity for philanthropy to advance public health practice.  In partnership with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the de Beaumont Foundation committed to fielding a nationally representative sample of the governmental public health workforce at the individual level.

The Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS) collected key public health workforce data from individual workers themselves. It set out to collect data from a nationally representative sample of state health agency workers about critical issues in today’s transforming health system such as the diversity of the public health workforce, workers’ ability to meet difficult challenges ahead, worker perspectives on current national trends, and aspects of the workplace environment that are likely to impact worker recruitment, retention, development, and performance.

This presentation will focus on the creation of PH WINS including the specific role of the philanthropic partner and identify ways that this new surveillance instrument can advance the field of public health.