The National Board of Public Health Examiners conducts a Job Task Analysis at least once every five-seven years. A Job Task Analysis is a highly-structured survey process that determines the most common tasks being performed by members of a professional field. Sequential job task analysis allow for a profession to measure changes in workforce responsibilities over time.

The NBPHE has conducted two recent job task analysis, one in 2016 and another in 2022. The session will review the results of the most recent 2022 Job Task Analysis and how the results differ from the 2016 study.

A special emphasis of the presentation will be made on the impact of COVID19 and how the pandemic impacted the work of the public health profession. The audience will be invited to provide input into whether these changes to the roles and responsibilities are temporary or if they have permanently changed the nature of public health as a profession.

During the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kentucky Department for Public Health (KDPH) identified areas of improvement related to Kentucky’s public health workforce that must be addressed to sustain current response efforts, and to prepare for future public health-related emergencies and disasters. Through CDC funding, KDPH established the Center for Foundational Health (C4FH) to develop policies, programs, and professional development opportunities to recruit, train and sustain a public health workforce. To help accomplish these goals, the C4FH team developed a pipeline of programs that begins with engaging high school students in public health careers, providing internship and experiential learning opportunities for post-secondary education students, and extending professional development opportunities for the current public health workforce.

The Kentucky Public Health Exploration Program is the first phase of the public health workforce pipeline. This program provides education to high school students, parents, and educators about the numerous public health career opportunities. In collaboration with local, state, and national agencies, this program provides public health career presentations, workshops, and hands-on activities at conferences, camps, and expos. Each program offering is an effort to encourage high school students to pursue a public health career.

Phase two of the pipeline focuses on opportunities for post-secondary students. Collaborating with seven colleges and universities across Kentucky, the Student Internship Program (SIP) immerses students in public health careers through experiential learning opportunities. Since the program’s inception, the SIP has established over 20 paid internship placements across the department and numerous hands-on activities for undergraduate and graduate students. All opportunities within the SIP share the common goal of developing the future of the public health workforce and establishing a pipeline to employment.

The pipeline concludes with the Educational Assistance Program (EAP). This program supports public health employees’ efforts to further their education in core public health focus areas by offering educational incentives through scholarships for tuition assistance and professional development opportunities. KDPH has collaborated with several universities and professional organizations to provide these opportunities for public health employees. All EAP offerings focus on developing a diverse and skilled response-ready public health workforce through education and training.

A representative, well-trained workforce is essential to address public health challenges (Commonwealth Fund, 2022; Coronado et al., 2020; Sellers et al., 2019). However, in a recent analysis by the de Beaumont Foundation and the Public Health National Center for Innovations, the public health workforce needs to grow by 80%, or approximately 80,000 full-time equivalent positions, to provide the basic services (de Beaumont Foundation, 2021; Jackson & Gracia, 2014). Additionally, the 2021 Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey indicates a disproportionate representation between the US population and the public health workforce, as the field is predominantly female (79%), white (54%) and over age of 40 (63%) (de Beaumont Foundation, 2022). Therefore, recruitment efforts to attract a robust, diverse workforce is critical to the success of the field and the health of our nation. While there are a variety of approaches to addressing the workforce needs (Hilliard & Boulton, 2012; Coronado et al., 2020), there has not been a coordinated effort to align recruitment efforts across organizations to create a system-level change.

In 2022, multiple organizations across public health convened to develop a national ecosystem for recruitment with the goal to create a larger, more diverse workforce equipped to advance health equity: Association for Schools and Programs of Public Health, Health Career Connection, Lewis/Ferguson Fellowship (CDC), New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Public Health Associate Program (CDC), Public Health AmeriCorps, and Summer Health Professions Education Program. By aligning efforts, these organizations are amplifying the efforts of each partner, reaching a larger audience more efficiently. This session will review the rationale, key strategies and goals, early successes, and vision for the future of this collaboration.

Interprofessional education (IPE) is a model where different health care specialties “learn with, from, and about each other”¹ and has shown to lead to a team based approach to patient care that improves quality of care and patient safety.² The World Health Organization has supported the implementation of IPE in their position document “Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice”.³ IPE is fundamental to prepare a collaborative practice healthcare workforce that is ready to provide the highest quality of care to improve health outcomes. This concept was reinforced by the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) three seminal reports^{2, 4-6} discussing the deficits in our health care system, the need to maximize our resources through cooperation and collaboration among disciplines, and the need to change the education of practitioners in various settings and disciplines to allow for the ability to function effectively as a team. The Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2030 initiative also describes the importance of IPE in their developmental ECBP-D08 objective: to Increase interprofessional prevention education in health professions training programs⁷.

For the past 7 years at Marshall B. Ketchum University (MBKU), we have conducted an IPE Population and Public Health course for our optometry, physician assistant, and pharmacy students to address the above aims through interaction and collaboration among the 3 professions utilizing small group discussion, team-based learning, problem solving workshops, and simulations. Interprofessional clinical care at our multidisciplinary clinic sites is the next step in expanding this education and training. This presentation will highlight the challenges faced, the course objectives and teaching methods used, as well as the lessons learned and modifications made over the years through student evaluations and input, the Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey (ICCAS) and the COVID-19 pandemic. The ICCAS compares student perceptions before and after participating in the IPE course through 17 individual items. This year’s results using the Paired T-Test revealed that the average after total score showed improvement of 7.38 units (T-Value = 9.86, p-value < 0.001). Individual items also showed statistically significant improvement using Wilcoxon analysis and will be discussed.