RT Book, Section
A1 Yeager, Valerie A.
A2 Boulton, Matthew L.
A2 Wallace, Robert B.
SR Print(0)
ID 1182685550
T1 The Public Health Workforce
T2 Maxcy-Rosenau-Last Public Health & Preventive Medicine, 16e
YR 2022
FD 2022
PB McGraw Hill
PP New York, NY
SN 9781259644511
LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1182685550
RD 2024/04/18
AB The  wide  range  of  activities  subsumed  under  the  rubric  of  public  health  practice  is  provided  by  a  large  and  diverse  workforce.  Assessing  the  size  and  composition  of  the  public  health  workforce  facilitates  information  necessary  to  identify  workforce  gaps,  forecast  trends  and  needs,  and  guide  workforce  development  policies.  In  sum,  enumerating  the  public  health  workforce  is  a  crucial  step  toward  strengthening  the  workforce  infrastructure.  Despite  the  value  in  enumerating  the  public  health  workforce,  this  is  no  easy  task  as  there  is  no  standard  system  of  monitoring  the  public  health  workforce  or  standard  worker  title  or  classification  scheme.  Further,  public  health  includes  diverse  employment  settings  (federal,  state,  and  local)  entailing  highly  varied  roles  and  disciplines  across  these  settings.  In  the  most  recent  effort  to  enumerate  governmental  public  health  workers  in  the  United  States,  an  estimated  290,988  were  identified  in  federal,  state,  and  local  public  health  agencies.1  This  chapter  presents  insights  about  the  makeup  of  the  governmental  public  health  workforce  and  its  disciplines,  public  health  practice  settings  and  evolving  system  changes,  educational  backgrounds  of  the  workforce  and  training  programs,  and  ongoing  challenges  for  the  public  health  workforce.  (See  Chapter  9:  Public  Health  Practice  in  the  United  States.)