Calls to promote trust in public health have grown, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Building long-term trust requires developing trustworthy public health professionals, starting with their undergraduate training. The University of Washington Public Health-Global Health major enrolls 300 undergraduates annually, and uses active learning and critical service-learning pedagogies in core courses. The students’ capstone experience applies these pedagogies to a community-engaged, action-oriented public health project. The faculty leads hold the primary relationships with community partners, which ensures effective and appropriate student engagement at a scale of 300 per year, while centering the community’s needs and meeting student learning goals.

We propose a framework for developing trustworthiness in future community-engaged public health practitioners and leaders. The framework builds on our earlier work representing the concept of trustworthiness in bi-directional trust relationships required for successful student participation in community-based participatory research. Trustworthy practitioners need to understand, respect and respond to community priorities, while 1) strategically using their skills to effectively promote health equity, and 2) present as honest, respectful, responsible and whole people to community partners.

The framework’s foundation is a strong relationship between the faculty lead(s) and community partner representative(s). The critical time needed to develop authentic relationships for community-engaged practice is not available to students in a 10- or 20- week college course. As such, the faculty relationships form the cornerstone that enables the chain of trust to propagate through the classroom. The faculty leads cultivate student trustworthiness through explicit discussion, feedback, and critical self-reflection. To complete the work/projects at a high quality, the faculty leads model trustworthiness to the community partners and to the students to provide them with an appropriate experience based on existing relationships, preparing them to create trusting relationships in their future community engaged public health practice.

Evidence of this approach’s effectiveness is demonstrated by community organizations inviting us back to work with them and in their interest to offer internships and hire our students as they enter the public health workforce. Future research is needed to examine the long-term impact of this approach on the development of trust within public health community partnerships.

UTHealth Houston is adapting the Community Action Poverty Simulator (CAPS) as an immersive and culturally inclusive public health education initiative with a primary focus on fostering empathy and a secondary emphasis on knowledge acquisition. The program’s overarching goal is to bridge the divide between theoretical knowledge and practical insights into poverty. Through interactive simulations and meaningful discussions, CAPS deepens empathy and improves participants' understanding of social determinants of health, equipping them to address poverty-related challenges professionally and ethically.

Recognizing poverty as a complex global issue that encompasses various aspects such as inadequate access to healthcare, education, food security, and stable housing, CAPS encourages cultural inclusivity by engaging both students from six health professions schools and community workers as volunteers. This inclusive approach acknowledges diverse backgrounds, thereby providing a comprehensive understanding of the social (or non-medical) determinants of health.

Aligned with UTHealth Houston's core competencies, CAPS serves as a vital educational resource that empowers the next generation of healthcare professionals. It focuses on instilling ethical values, understanding healthcare systems, and enhancing communication skills. With the active participation of 825 students and 210 community workers starting January 2023, CAPS aims to deepen empathy and improve participants' understanding of social determinants of health, equipping them to address poverty-related challenges professionally and ethically.

CAPS utilizes pre- and post-surveys to measure participants' empathy levels, knowledge gain, attitudes, and skills, facilitating continuous improvement aligned with UT Health Houston's core competencies. The program places significant emphasis on ethical exploration, fostering interprofessional collaboration, promoting population health, and implementing rigorous assessment strategies to measure outcomes. The poverty simulator has positively influenced participant’s attitude towards empathetic communication and community engagement.

The long-term impact of CAPS is its ability to empower participants, including students and community workers, to make a positive difference in patients' lives and communities. By cultivating empathy and expanding knowledge about poverty and its complexities, CAPS prepares individuals to address public health challenges with professionalism, ethical considerations, and a steadfast commitment to improving the well-being of populations affected by poverty.

Importance of the Issue: Strengthening the ecosystem through which public health prevention research is initiated, carried out, disseminated, and adapted is needed to advance health equity and justice. This abstract describes the process and findings of an environmental scan carried out to better understand how to close the gap between research and practice. Participants prioritized equity centered approaches. Insights and priorities that emerged were organized into a five-part framework. The framework elevates trust and shared leadership between communities, practitioners, and researchers and focuses on the end goal of advancing health equity through systems change.

Methodology: In support of state-level chronic disease prevention practice, a national public sector public health practice organization, with support from the CDC, facilitated an environmental scan. State chronic disease practitioners and researchers shared information through focus groups, key informant interviews, and documents. Data were analyzed through a deductive/inductive hybrid analysis.

Findings: Findings included a breadth of insights, about 1) factors that facilitate and present barriers to the translation of research to policy and practice within state chronic disease units and ,2) ideas for the future of research translation.

Recommendations: Change is needed at the individual, organizational, and systems level to close the gap between research and practice. The framework presents a vision, serves as a call to action, and is a tool to facilitate reflection, planning, and collective achievement of shared goals. Individuals can look at the framework and make shifts in how they see themselves and go about their work. Organization level teams can reflect on their strengths across the framework and define opportunities for improvement within their organization and with partners. Multisector / multi-level teams can look at the framework together, sharing their individual and organizational strengths and areas for improvement, then define priorities and take collective action to advance research and practice in pursuit of health equity. Recognizing the wealth of existing tools, the priorities identified through the scan were also mapped to existing research translation, public health practice, and justice frameworks and tools so users can quickly identify what components will best suit their needs and community context.

Summary: This study explores enhancing community engagement through innovative, non-traditional partnerships between K-12 public schools, colleges, universities, and community organizations. It identifies key strategies and best practices, providing recommendations for educators, practitioners, and policymakers to build effective collaborations.

Background: Community engagement is crucial for addressing various public health issues and societal challenges. South Carolina was funded to enhance Environmental and Public Health Tracking (EPHT) in 2022. The Environmental Public Health Tracking Grant primarily aims to improve data use, understanding, and community engagement by developing data products and collaborating with traditional and non-traditional partners. Partnering with academia has created sustainable collaborative initiatives that keep both student and faculty engaged with SC Tracking dashboards. Curricula was designed to promote usage of SC Tracking dashboards for class projects, research assignments and to continue to encourage public awareness of environmental public health factors. This study explores how academic-practice linkages can create sustainable partnerships that benefit both academia and the community.

Methods: Sustainable partnerships were established through existing community partners including community organization board members, high school and university faculty and staff, and through introductory phone calls and in-person presentations to non-traditional partners. Questionnaires were distributed and evaluated after SC Tracking quarterly meetings, to ensure the sustainability of future partnership action plans. Partnerships with several public high schools, the University of South Carolina and Benedict College have been essential for identifying strategies for sustainable successes, continual improvement, connecting with other academic institutions and maintaining best practices.

Results: Since August 2022 SC Tracking has presented to numerous high schools, colleges and universities, and community organizations. Teachers and community organizations are using EPHT products to enhance the work they are already doing.

Conclusion: Combined efforts to promote SC Tracking have resulted in increased web site views, better data understanding through post-presentation surveys, and increased collaborative partnerships. Outreach from students and community members has provided beneficial feedback that will be used to improve the dashboard content, resources, and the website. Targeted lesson plans are being developed to enhance utilization of Tracking materials and data, in hopes of reaching a larger audience.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been coined “the single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today.” ACEs trigger a toxic stress response, which can interrupt neurodevelopment and alter the body’s response to stress, leading to worse mental health, especially in times of transition. With this knowledge, we created programs in community and academic settings where ACEs are prevalent to foster support and build resilience. This abstract explores issues that arise from conducting screening within an academic institution, the problem of trust in public health services, and challenges that hinder effective collaboration between academic and community partners.

In academia, implementing ACEs screenings faces various challenges. Contacting students en masse for screening is complex due to FERPA regulations. Moreover, mandatory reporting of abuse and adherence to IRB requirements to support students expressing suicidal ideation necessitates collaboration with Title IX and counseling services. In addition, the disclosure of mandatory reporting obligations may influence students' willingness to answer questions regarding abuse. This intersection of mandatory reporting requirements with Title IX regulations creates an additional workload for faculty and poses a barrier to student engagement.

In the community, one facet of mistrust centers on the time lag between community screenings and introduction to programming. Time delays further hinder the development of comfortability with program coordinators. Simultaneously, use of shared document, like Goodgle surveys, amplifies this mistrust. Transitioning from face-to-face to virtual meetings heightens apprehension, especially with unfamiliar providers. Lastly, the absence of needs assessments before program development can deter interest. Together, these issues delay deployment of resources to students and community members.

Strategies like additional budgeting for screenings, development of relationships with Title IX coordinators and counseling on campus, improved virtual interactions, and increased communication/resource allocation speed can help overcome these challenges. By understanding and addressing these multifaceted trust issues, the public health community and academia can collaboratively work towards a more inclusive, patient-centric, and academically efficient healthcare landscape to effectively disseminate care to people in need.

The public health workforce has worked tirelessly over the last three years in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and have reported increased feelings of stress, anxiety, and burnout. Nationally, there have been studies conducted to collect demographic, competency, and self-reported mental health status data; however, most of the members of the governmental public health workforce in New Jersey (NJ) were not part of these assessments. To gain a better understanding of the NJ governmental public health workforce (GPHW), a survey was conducted between June and September 2023.

The survey responses provide a picture of the NJ GPHW demographically, by tenure, and by reported workforce development needs. Survey respondents were predominantly White females between the ages of 25 and 60 years old. NJ’s GPHW is much smaller than those across the country and a majority of respondents serve larger communities with less staff than their national counterparts. There is also a distinct gap in tenure with the majority of respondents working either less than five or more than twenty years in the field. Additionally, respondents are more highly educated than the national average and many have degrees specific to public health.

The survey results demonstrated that survey respondents’ self-reported mental health conditions were affected by a variety of factors including job satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, bullying and harassment, and supportive supervisors and leadership. Nearly 25% of respondents rated their mental/emotional well-being as fair or poor with about 20% reporting symptoms consistent with anxiety, depression, or burnout. Exhaustion, one of two conditions shown to contribute to burnout, was reported by 88% of the respondents.

The data indicate that New Jersey governmental public health workers experienced an increase in symptoms related to anxiety, depression, and burnout post-pandemic. These symptoms were correlated with survey respondents’ self-reported assessment of the quality of their work-related conditions. Recommendations for future research include conducting focus groups and key informant interviews to further explore factors impacting conditions. Recommendations made based upon the analysis of data as opportunities for improvement spanned across four distinct areas funding, training, mental health, and policy development.

BACKGROUND: The Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (SPHTM) formed a committee to monitor progress on a strategy to institutionalize anti-racism in 2020 and produced its first report in 2021. The equity scorecard is being updated and identifies equity gaps in the SPHTM community, building on the initial report.

METHODS: The committee identified metrics to track student, faculty, and staff success. Trends for applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students were stratified by race, ethnicity, citizenship status, and sex. Financial scholarships and graduation rates were analyzed for enrolled students. Faculty activities related to equity, diversity, and inclusion were analyzed using data from faculty annual reporting. Staff demographics were examined.

RESULTS: White students were the largest proportion (47% in Fall 2022) but the proportion of Black or African American enrolled students doubled from 2018 (11.5%) to 2022 (22.4%). Scholarship awards to Black males increased from $3,500 average per individual in 2021 to $20,833 in 2023 while all Asian, and Black and Hispanic female awardees had average awards less than 75% of the overall average award amount. More than 50% of staff were White in each year from 2018-2022 with a peak of 57% in 2020. The majority of full-time faculty were White (57% in Fall 2022). The proportion of Black faculty rose 6 percentage points from Fall 2018 to Fall 2022 (from 6% to 12%). Most faculty (86.3%) had research activity related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) while 49.6% had EDI-related teaching activities.

CONCLUSION: The second scorecard report offers insights on progress made, such as an increased proportion of Black students, as well as persistent equity gaps. The report’s recommendations included suggestions for a revised scholarship rubric implemented in 2022 that significantly shifted average award amounts for marginalized populations. Addressing EDI issues in public health training is the first step in addressing these issues in the wider community.

Internships are often requirements for graduation. Public health students can be required to produce deliverables and demonstrate competencies from internships, with required hours varying by program and level. A preceptor guides the intern, including administrative functions, mentoring, orienting, teaching, providing feedback, and assessing skills. Data show positive preceptor experiences enhance learning and can influence an individual’s decision to stay in their chosen field.

There’s a need for trained public health professionals in rural and underserved communities across America. As a model for this need across the nation, Oregon, a geographically diverse state with 33% of its population living in rural and frontier areas, lacks formal training for public health preceptors. The Oregon ECHO Network and the Oregon Health & Science University - Portland State University School of Public Health, in collaboration with Oregon State University, offered two public health preceptor ECHO programs in winter and fall 2023 to increase preceptor skills and confidence.

Participants included 54 individuals from 14 counties in Oregon, joining from public health agencies, community-based organizations, and the healthcare system. After participating in the program 95% of post-program survey respondents shared that their communication skills with interns enhanced, 95% reported the program provided them with resources for further training and mentorship, and 95% reported they learned from other intern host site experiences. Sixty-two percent had improved satisfaction precepting and 90% reported that ECHO provided them with example policies and protocols for managing interns. This session will share promising methods to increase preceptor skills and confidence.

The growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and the urgent need for public health awareness necessitates innovative, interactive, and accessible dementia training for students and public health professionals. The curriculum—A Public Health Approach to Dementia—is a new tool to meet this need.

Alzheimer’s and other dementias are a growing public health priority with a quickly evolving evidence base. Through the partnership of the Alzheimer’s Association, CDC, and Emory University, A Public Health Approach to Dementia launched four new modules in 2023 and 2024. These free, asynchronous, online learning modules support the training needs of the current and future public health workforce. CDC provided the scientific and research expertise, Emory University provided the academic expertise, and the Alzheimer’s Association provided the community-based practice and implementation expertise in developing the modules. As a result, these modules connect the academic and practice gap for public health students, educators, and professionals to ensure they advance from foundational to in-depth knowledge on the public health approach to dementia. The curriculum includes courses on the public health impact of dementia, health equity and dementia, and public health and dementia caregiving.

The interactive modules were designed to be practical, accessible, and engaging for learners in different environments. Data collected upon release of the first two modules informed subsequent modules. Health Equity in Dementia — Using a Public Health Lens to Advance Health Equity in Alzheimer’s and Other Dementia was released in August 2023 and Public Health and Dementia Caregiving was released in December 2023. Following each release, nearly half (43% and 47%, respectively) of unique enrollees completed the 90-minute modules. Since release, each module has maintained steady enrollment, averaging 73 and 82 new enrollments per month, respectively. Across both modules, most learners report an increase in knowledge after taking the course (89% and 92%) and report that it will be useful to them in their work or studies (87% and 90%). This curriculum demonstrates the strengths of partnership between academia, science, and practice to reach current and future public health professionals with information critical to improving the public health approach to dementia.

The current structure of built and social environments amplify pandemic threats. During the COVID-19 pandemic, cities of all sizes functioned to promote the rapid transmission of SARS-CoV-2, particularly among people with lower incomes or jobs deemed essential by state policy. To prevent spreading events from happening in future cities, to foster attenuation rather than amplification, and to protect the most vulnerable city residents, a new kind of “Pandemic-Resilient City” must emerge. This will require integration of research coupled with strong community-level relationships to create prediction-based response systems that build ‘city-level immune systems’ to predict pandemic threats and enable rapid response.

This study is a collaboration between multi-disciplinary research teams (public health [epidemiology, health behavior], statistics, engineering, agriculture, and ecology) at Oregon State University (OSU) and politically and geographically diverse community partners. We are co-creating with cities the infrastructure to be resilient to pandemics, through the ability to sense, predict and respond rapidly to infectious disease threats.

In the spring and summer of 2023, we hosted Pandemic-Resilient Cities day-long workshops with local leaders and decision-makers in three Oregon counties (coastal/western, central, eastern), to characterize the current situation, clarifying the data needs of cities, and prototype feasible and relevant prototypes of city-level immune systems. Participants included local public health authorities, city and county elected officials, health systems, school systems, city and utility managers, Tribal leaders, OSU Extension Service, and academic research faculty. Workshops employed adult-learning/participatory approaches and emphasized learning and listening, facilitated bi-directional sharing of information, creative discussion and game play, and time for unstructured relationship building.

Following the workshops and together with participants, we launched wastewater sampling pilot projects in all three locations. As of this writing, we are using wastewater data to measure current infectious disease prevalence (RSV, Flu, COVID-19), integrating predictive data systems into current response systems, and providing cities with information to respond rapidly to potential threats. In the coming year, we will continue to develop these prototypes, and plan to scale to other cities nationally.