About the Consortium

The National Consortium for Public Health Workforce Development works collaboratively to ensure the public health workforce has the skills, resources, and support it needs to address the social determinants of health and achieve health equity.

We unite state, Tribal, local, and territorial public health leaders; universities and training providers; philanthropy; federal agencies; the public health workforce; community members; policy makers; and partners in healthcare and other sectors to strategically align our collective actions, support and promote new and relevant research, facilitate shared learning, and improve understanding of the urgency and significance of a well-trained, well-resourced, and diverse public health workforce.

History

In 2013, the National Consortium for Public Health Workforce Development, established by the de Beaumont Foundation, convened public health leaders from more than 30 national public health membership associations, federal agencies, and public health workforce peer networks to identify areas of alignment among their priorities.

Informed by a national survey of the public health workforce in 2014, the Consortium met throughout 2015 to review and discuss the importance of an emerging set of strategic skills for the public health workforce and how, if implemented, these skills could impact the public health workforce.

In 2017, the Consortium released Building Skills for a More Strategic Public Health Workforce: A Call to Action, identifying the 8 skills that all public health workforce members should attain, regardless of their role. While there has been notable progress in the socialization of these recommendations, further work is required to dismantle the obstacles to ensuring their mastery within the public health workforce.

In 2020, the de Beaumont Foundation convened a Planning Committee to relaunch the National Consortium for Public Health Workforce Development and to develop an action plan for strengthening and supporting the public health workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic had laid bare and exacerbated gaps in the workforce, and persistent health disparities highlighted the need to ensure the workforce could support communities.

Funding

The National Consortium for Public Health Workforce Development and this website are supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $141,982 with 23 percentage funded by CDC/HHS and $486,948 amount and 77 percentage funded by the de Beaumont Foundation. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.

We created an operational plan to clarify the structure and management of the Consortium.

Steering Committee Members

The Steering Committee was responsible for developing the National Consortium’s common agenda, clarifying the challenges, identifying the goals, and defining the strategies the Consortium will undertake. Collectively, they determined that an equity-centered approach was an imperative.

Kaye Bender
American Public Health Association
Lauren Powell
Takeda (Co-Chair)
Amber Williams
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
Andre Fresco
Yakima Health District (WA)
Ashley Edmiston
National Association of County and City Health Officials
Betty Bekemeie
Northwest Center for Public Health Practice, University of Washington
Cynthia Harris
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
Denise Smith
National Association of Community Health Workers
Donna Petersen
University of South Florida College of Public Health
Lauren Ramos
Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration (ex officio member)
Liljana Baddour
Louisiana Department of Health
Michael Meit
East Tennessee State University Center for Rural Health Research
Mighty Fine
American Public Health Association
Monica Valdes Lupi
Kresge Foundation
Pattie Simone
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ex officio member)
Paul Kuehnert
Public Health Accreditation Board
Linda Alexander
Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health
Ron Bialek
Public Health Foundation
Vincent LaFronza
National Network of Public Health Institutes
Wilma Wooten
County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency

Founders Committee Members

The Founders Committee came together to create a vision for the collective movement to change the public health workforce. They were responsible for imagining and defining what a successful collaborative change effort would look like, adjusting this original vision to account for the global COVID-19 pandemic, selecting a systems change expert to lead the work through a request for proposal process, and providing guidance to the selected applicant, FSG, about how to build the foundation of this collective impact process.

Ashley Edmiston
National Association of County and City Health Officials
Dorothy Cilenti
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
Gaby Benenson
Centers of Disease Control and Prevention
Gen Meredith
Cornell University Public Health
Heather Krasna
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Jennifer McKeever
WE Public Health
Jessica Solomon Fisher
Public Health Accreditation Board
Jovonni Spinner
Food and Drug Administration
Kathleen Amos
Public Health Foundation
Kaye Bender
American Public Health Association
Kyle Bogaert
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
Liljana Baddour
Louisiana Department of Health
Monica Valdes Lupi
Kresge Foundation
Rivka Liss-Levinson
Center for State and Local Government Excellence and ICMA Retirement Corporation
Shirley Orr
SOCO Consulting and Association of Public Health Nurses
Steve Reynolds
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention