Academic health department (AHD) partnerships – formal partnerships between health departments and academic institutions – have the potential to enhance the capacity of the organizations involved and offer a variety of benefits. Nationwide, health departments are experiencing reductions in funding, personnel, and essential services while at the same time seeing their responsibilities shift from that of care provider to chief health strategist. Public Health 3.0 is calling on health departments to become health strategists, to apply new skills and leverage new partnerships in spite of years of steady declines in funding. These factors create a growing requirement for specialized, culturally competent personnel who understand the value and importance of working in multi-sectoral collaborations to address all areas of health, health equity, and trauma-informed care. The rapidly changing landscape of public health requires the best academic and non-academic preparation for tomorrow’s leaders.
This archived webinar explores how the
Boone County Health Department (BCHD) in Illinois is innovating a teaching health department to expand its capacity and meet the challenge of growing needs. At BCHD, academic partnerships fill a need to help meet accreditation requirements while overcoming barriers imposed by limited funding, providing a real-world understanding of public health for the next generation of leaders. Student outreach projects overseen by the health department also provide new skills, new perspectives, and needed advocates for public health’s changing role. During this webinar,
AHD Learning Community member Amanda Mehl, RN, MPH, Public Health Administrator for BCHD, and Emily Morales Reyes, Intern and Project Coordinator for the Boone County Healthy Work Initiative, shared this success story of an AHD partnership in action.
This one hour webinar was originally presented in
September 2019 as part of the
AHD Webinar Series, a regular webinar series hosted by the AHD Learning Community. Discussion among the presenters and participants that occurred during the live version of the webinar was captured. To learn more:
- Watch the archived webinar below
- Download the presentation slides or other webinar materials:
- Program Plan for the Development of Future Public Health Leaders – the Teaching Health Department:
- Boone County Teaching Health Department (BCTHD) Mentorship Initiative:
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This webinar is made possible through funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Cooperative Agreement Number NU38OT000311. The content of the webinar is solely the responsibility of the presenters and does not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsor.