​During the 2014 TRAIN Affiliate Consortium (TAC) Annual Meeting held at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA, Dr. Judith Monroe, Director of CDC’s Office of State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (OSTLTS) spoke about how TRAIN advances and supports performance improvement efforts, including public health accreditation. As this year’s plenary speaker, Dr. Monroe shared insight on how TRAIN, the nation’s premier learning management network for professionals who protect the public’s health, serves as a bridge between public health and healthcare professionals to learn and work together. She continued by describing how CDC’s Public Health Associate Program, managed by OSTLTS, is utilizing TRAIN to integrate the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals into training plans, noting that “having the ability through TRAIN to track what a learner is competent in is incredibly powerful.” 

Understanding workforce learning, knowledge, and experience - analyzed through TRAIN data on workforce training – provides health departments with key insight in preparing their staffs for the future. Having the ability to gain access to training quickly is becoming increasingly important for both public health professionals and clinicians; TRAIN provides this “on-demand” access.  Dr. Monroe made clear that “TRAIN has a huge opportunity and that 3.0 training is where we need to move in the future,” because “at the core of all of the success of our work is the training our workforce gets.” 

Overall, Dr. Monroe’s presentation brought the topics covered during the annual meeting - quality improvement, public health and healthcare, and public health accreditation, among others - together and showed how TRAIN can be used by the entire public health community. 

“Everything touches public health,” commented Chris Stan, Connecticut’s TRAIN Administrator, in response to the presentation.

Throughout the three-day meeting, numerous examples were provided on how TRAIN is making a difference in public health and healthcare. One opportunity was provided in a collaboration with the Association for Community Health Improvement (ACHI), in a session focused on how TRAIN can be used by hospitals. This and other sessions offered the more than 50 attendees ideas of new opportunities to explore across their agencies and organizations.

If your public health or healthcare organization is interested in having someone attend the 2015 Annual TAC Meeting in New Mexico, contact the Public Health Foundation.