​Launched by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) on September 14, 2011, PHAB’s public health department accreditation process seeks to advance quality and performance within public health departments. Accreditation documents the capacity of public health departments in delivering the three core functions of public health (assessment, policy development, and assurance) and the Ten Essential Public Health Services. Furthermore, accreditation helps health departments identify performance improvement opportunities, improve management capacity, develop leadership skills, and improve relationships with the community. Thus, accreditation gives reasonable assurance of the range of public health services a department should provide while also stimulating greater accountability and transparency.

To assist health departments in reviewing tools and resources available to benefit their accreditation process, TRAIN, the nation’s premier learning management system (LMS) designed for professionals who protect and improve the public’s health, hosted a three-part webinar series on accreditation. Focusing largely on the requirements of Domain 8 − encourage the development of a sufficient number of qualified public health workers; and assess staff competencies and address gaps by enabling organizational and individual training and development opportunities – the webinars discussed:

• Key training tracking requirements that meet accreditation standards.
• Reasons why the Public Health Core Competencies matter for today’s public health workforce.
• Examples of how individual states have piloted a workforce self-assessment survey tool and captured assessment data via the TRAIN learning management system.
• The impact of effectiveness and efficiency of LMS on accreditation workforce development efforts.
• The application of the TRAIN Survey and My Training Plan functions to state, local, tribal, and territorial public health department seeking to meet accreditation requirements.
• How the Training Plan can be utilized for tracking and reporting the linkages between training and the Public Health Core Competencies, Public Health Preparedness Capabilities, and PHAB standards.
  

The webinar series was well-received, with over 500 total participants representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and numerous state, local, and tribal health departments, as well as federal agencies and national public health organizations. Comments and reviews of the webinar series suggest that the webinar content is beneficial to health departments seeking tools and resource to assist in accreditation. A sample of participant comments on the webinars includes: 

• Great Webinar.  Very well organized.  Good speakers.  Good information!  Look forward to the next one (Webinar 1).
• Great Webinar!! Great Speakers, Good Information. Good to let other stakeholders know the value of TRAIN and all of its capabilities in tracking, reporting and accountability (Webinar 1).
• This was a good course to introduce people to the links between core competencies, public health accreditation, TRAIN LMS and the use of self-assessments. Public health entities would benefit from a deeper discussion about the use of multiple assessments to complement the self-assessment. This would help administration make well-informed individual and organizational workforce development investments (Webinar 1).
• Excellent presentation by all (Webinar 2). 
• This webinar was very informative.  Speakers were great in addressing the great possibilities that TRAIN offers.  Great Webinar (Webinar 2)!
• It was very valuable to hear directly from public health practitioners about the ways they use a learning management system within their health departments (Webinar 3).
• I believe TRAIN is a very helpful system and can help many employees, etc., with their training needs (Webinar 3).
• Fantastic webinar series (Webinar 3)!
• The webinar was very informative and easy to understand (Webinar 3).

For public health professionals who were unable to attend the live webinars, the TRAIN Community has made available recorded versions of the first and third webinar.

• Public Health Accreditation & Competency Based Learning: A Model Based on the TRAIN Learning Management System (Webinar 1) can be accessed here or searching TRAIN by Course ID 1030825.
• Public Health Accreditation & Competency Based Learning: A Model Based on the TRAIN Learning Management System (Webinar 3) can be accessed here or searching TRAIN by Course ID 1032949. 
  

The TRAIN Team hopes that health departments across the country find these webinars useful in planning for public health accreditation. For assistance on how TRAIN can help your health department meet public health accreditation standards, please contact the TRAIN Team at training@phf.org. ​