​Workforce development plans contribute to organizations’ abilities to deliver Essential Public Health Services and improve the health of their communities. Critical components of a workforce development plan identify gaps in staff skills and competence as well as ways to address these gaps. By using TRAIN, the nation’s premier learning management network for professionals who protect the public’s health, state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments, public health training centers, educational institutions, and national organizations can create training plans – a curriculum designed to address specific gaps in knowledge, skills, and competence – and direct staff to access and complete those training plans. Health departments can incorporate training plans into their workforce development plans to help improve individual competence and fulfill organizational training needs, which leads to a more prepared public health workforce.

In response to requests from public health, public safety, and emergency preparedness organizations for training plans, the Public Health Foundation (PHF) worked with nationally-recognized providers of training to post training pans to TRAIN. Currently, TRAIN has seven training plans available for learners on topics ranging from public health preparedness to epidemiology:

• Basics of Public Health Preparedness – University of North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center
• Community Health Assessment and Improvement Planning – Community Health and Development, University of Kansas
• E is for Epidemiology – University of North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center
• I is for Investigation – University of North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center
• Medical Reserve Corps Epidemiology Training – North Carolina Institute for Public Health
• WIC Learning Online – US Department of Agriculture, WIC Works Resource System
• Women’s Integrated Systems for Health (WISH) – North Carolina Institute for Public Health, the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and the School of Medicine’s Center for Maternal and Infant Health
  

National training plans offer benefits for both learners and organizations. Training plans posted on TRAIN allow for the use of nationally adopted competencies such as the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals, Medical Reserve Corps Core Competencies, and Public Health Preparedness and Response Core Competencies, which can help build skills and knowledge necessary to deliver the Essential Public Health Services. Additionally, when submitting a workforce development plan for Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) accreditation Measure 8.2.1 A, health departments can use the training plan feature on TRAIN to demonstrate how they deliver, monitor, and track employee training.

PHF invites state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments - as well as other public health, public safety, and emergency preparedness organizations, hospitals, health centers, and community-based organizations - to work directly with PHF to develop web-based training plans and post them to TRAIN.