​Sponsored by the Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Foundation and hosted by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, the 2012 U.S. Public Health Service Scientific and Training Symposium brought together more than 1,000 public health providers and administrators for continuing education seminars on the latest trends and innovations in public health care delivery, administration and research. The conference theme, Prevention Strategies for a Health Nation: Building on the Basics of Public Health, provided participants the opportunity to attend sessions and receive continuing education credits on:  

• Healthy and Safe Community Environments
• Clinical and Community Preventive Services
• Empowering People to Make Healthy Choices
• Elimination of Health Disparities
• Prevention in the Field of Mental and Behavioral Health

TRAIN, the nation’s premier learning management system for professionals who protect the public's health, presented an oral session on “Improving Minority Participation in the Public Health Workforce” (Elimination of Health Disparities) to over 50 public health professionals. The presentation focused on the Public Health Foundation’s (PHF) Minority Outreach Initiative which utilized TRAIN to introduce entry level public courses to undergraduate minority students. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Office of State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support (OSTLTS), the four schools that participated in the initiative were Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University, Florida International University, Morgan State University, and the University of Arizona. Presented by Erin Bougie, TRAIN Program Assistant, the session identified how TRAIN was used as a mechanism for introducing minority students to public health; described how TRAIN was utilized to collect and analyze data on participating students; and demonstrated how the Minority Outreach Initiative can serve as a model for other academic institutions. Session attendees participated in valuable discussion and suggested that the initiative be replicated at the high school level. These comments and suggestions are important in the potential impact of this outreach initiative in future years. 
 

To learn more about the initiative, download the presentation slides or visit PHF’s Minority Outreach Page. For a detailed analysis of the initiative's results, review the Final Report (PDF) from 2012.