In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists suggested approaches, including upskilling and recruitment/hiring, to strengthen workforce capacity in public health data science. This article estimates the number of recently graduated data scientists who might be eligible for and potentially hirable into government public health jobs…
High turnover rates in the public health workforce pose ongoing challenges to maintain essential services and institutional knowledge. Recent studies indicate that job dissatisfaction, burnout, and structural barriers have intensified following the COVID-19 pandemic. While prior studies have identified key predictors of turnover intention, the potential of machine learning to improve predictive accuracy and guide…
Governmental public health has been saddled with underinvestment and stagnant wages, making recruitment into the sector challenging. Although governmental public health pays reasonably well overall, it is also generally viewed as uncompetitive with the healthcare and tech sectors, which often capture recent graduates and recent hires. The growing concern of student loan debt, coupled with…
The Public Health Workforce Calculator was developed early in the COVID-19 pandemic to help public health agencies estimate the staffing needed to fully implement the Foundational Public Health Services (FPHS). However, the data used to develop the algorithm for the Workforce Calculator was from pre-pandemic time periods. This article examines whether the Workforce Calculator remains…
Throughout the COVID-19 response and into the current recovery period, demand for new public health staff has been relatively high. Increased funding and need has created an opportunity to expand the public health workforce to levels not seen over the past 15 years. More students are receiving public health degrees than ever before. Given that…
The size of the US public health workforce has markedly declined in recent years, a trend exacerbated by economic instability and an aging demographic. There was a temporary surge in staffing through emergency hires during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the permanence of these positions remains uncertain. Concurrently, public health degree conferrals have sharply increased, creating…
The public health workforce is in a critical state, with the current supply being unsustainable at best and dire at worst. Based on data from 2017 and 2019, health departments needed to hire 80,000 full-time employees to provide basic public health foundational services even before the onset of COVID-19. The situation has likely worsened due…
The local, state, and Tribal government public health workforce is the backbone of the US public health infrastructure, providing services crucial to health, safety, and national biosecurity. To determine whether the workforce can provide needed services, we must understand how many individuals are in this workforce, what they do, how much they get paid, and…
A well-trained public health workforce is the linchpin to addressing current and future public health challenges, but achieving this goal requires a significant overhaul of recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining staff. This webinar provides an introduction to the public health workforce, focusing on challenges that the workforce has faced since the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics covered…
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed public health infrastructure gaps and the need for a strong public health workforce capable of supporting population health and promoting health equity. One of the major causes of the infrastructure gaps is ongoing public health workforce shortages. Recruiting and retaining public health employees and ensuring they have necessary skills are vital…
