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Kathi Traugh, MPH, Project Director, Office of Public Health Practice

Yale School of Public Health

Susan Nappi, MPH, Executive Director, Office of Public Health Practice

Yale School of Public Health

The prolonged COVID-19 response laid bare a reality the public health community had long understood and endured: that public health agencies were woefully understaffed, over-tasked, and underappreciated. This reality was as true in Connecticut (CT) as it was nationwide, where years of strained budgets coupled with a "tsunami" of retirements and the extraordinary requirements of a pandemic response had resulted in a public health workforce under unbearable stress. Armed with the CDC Crisis Response Cooperative Agreement: COVID-19 Public Health Workforce Supplemental funding in 2021 and data from recent workforce surveys, the CT Department of Public Health (DPH) decided to invest in its workers by creating the Public Health Training Academy of CT (PHTAC), envisioned as a sustainable, accessible, "one-stop shopping" professional development resource.

"Workforce development is a top priority for our Commissioner of Public Health, Dr. Manisha Juthani," said Tom St. Louis, the newly appointed Director of the Office of Public Health Workforce Development at CT DPH. "Training that provides pathways for career development by supporting the initial training, skill building, and continuing education needs of our public health workforce is a key component of delivering foundational public health services and attracting and retaining talented and diverse staff."

As part of their long-standing partnership in the development of the public health workforce, CT DPH engaged the Yale School of Public Health’s Office of Public Health Practice​ (OPHP) in building the foundational elements of PHTAC. OPHP administers the CT component of the New England Public Health Training Center in collaboration with Boston University and has managed a statewide workforce development advisory group for over 20 years. As a seasoned provider of continuing education to the public health community, OPHP recognized that the supporting structure for the Academy already stood: the TRAIN Learning Network.

"Use of TRAIN as our learning management system for the new academy was never a question," said Kathi Traugh, OPHPs PHTAC Project Manager. "CT DPH was an early TRAIN adopter 20 years ago, and always understood the potential of the system to support life-long learning of public health practitioners, regardless of where they practice throughout their career."

Traugh explained that CT DPH has always promoted and supported TRAIN as the learning management system for its workforce and partners, most importantly local health departments, but also community partners and other state agencies with public health responsibilities. This meant that key stakeholders in a variety of sectors already had familiarity with TRAIN and its use. And while the Academy will be creating new courses and trainings tailored to the specific practice needs of our state, TRAIN already housed many CT courses while at the same time opening access to thousands of high-quality trainings. Traugh emphasized, "We want to avoid 're-creating the wheel.'"

The Academy also provides an opportunity to have more resources so CT can fully utilize TRAIN’s administrative capacity for tracking and evaluating training. "As we all know, the quality of data you receive from a system is as good as the quality of data you put in," Traugh explained. "An open system like TRAIN has many advantages but requires that course providers and users keep their data up-to-date.”

Lastly, CT plans to take advantage of innovations for TRAIN that expand its capabilities. OPHP and Boston University recently made investments to link TRAIN to another learning management system to support more in-depth, faculty-led courses, such as Evidence Based Public Health. OPHP has been in discussion with the Western Region Public Health Training Center on the use of its Public Health Core Competency Self-Assessment tool.

"Our work on creating the Public Health Training Academy of CT as fully envisioned has just begun," said St. Louis. "But a strong professional development platform like TRAIN gives us a jump-start on making that vision for the Academy a reality."