How Do We Ensure the Quality of the Public Health Workforce?

How Do We Ensure the Quality of the Public Health Workforce? EDITORIAL Suggested citation for this article: Thacker SB. How do we ensure the quality of the public health workforce? Prev Chronic Dis [serial online] 2005 Apr [date cited]. Available brought unprecedented attention to public health in the United States. The national response to these events included a large infusion of resources into the public health system that enhanced the capacity for the system to respond to terrorist threats and other public health emergencies. However, as illustrated by the emerging epidemics of obesity and diabetes in this country, a disproportionate burden of disease, death, and disability in this century will continue to be attributable to chronic disease. To address this burden effectively requires the development of a workforce with new skills in addition to maintenance of evolving traditional competencies. In 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report, Who Will Keep the Public Healthy?, that targeted the training needs of the public health workforce in this century (1). The IOM report included a recommendation for federal agencies to provide incentives for developing academic–practice partnerships. Two contributions to this issue of Preventing Chronic Disease address this recommendation and offer excellent illustrations of the benefits of such partnerships. Franks et al also address a second IOM recommendation for developing curricula in emerging areas of public health practice; they share their work in social marketing, physical activity , and evidence-based public health (2). Bodzin et al address both recommendations as they develop competen-cies and curricula in genomics, a field that few people understand well but one that will probably redefine both clinical medicine and public health practice (3). These investigators recognize both the training needs resulting from new challenges in public health and the opportunities to adopt new strategies and technologies to reach public health workers who are thirsty for the knowledge and skills that will enable them to do their jobs effectively. The need to identify, train, and support the public health workforce has been long recognized (4-6). Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with several other organizations in and outside of government , acknowledge the workforce as the essential element in public health, support for training in public health has been inconsistent and poorly funded. The director of the CDC in 2001 declared that the first priority of the agency was to build the capacity of …