Staff Member Honored for Public Health Training Center Work.
Karla Todd, director of the New England Public Health Training Center (NEPHTC), part of the Activist Lab, is the winner of the National Certificate of Merit from the National Environmental Health Organization (NEHA).
The award will be announced at NEHA’s national meeting in Anaheim, California, on June 27, and Todd will receive it at NEHA’s New England conference in South Portand, Maine, on September 19.
Todd is being recognized for her advocacy efforts to keep the Public Health Training Centers program in the federal budget. During that advocacy work, Todd, together with Anne Fidler and Kathleen MacVarish of the Activist Lab, and community partners, also secured a competitive grant from Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to continue funding NEPHTC through 2022.
The training centers strengthen the technical, scientific, managerial, and leadership competencies of the current and future public health workforce in their respective regions. In partnership with schools and programs of public health, they assess learning needs, develop and provide accessible training programs, and support graduate students in field placements and collaborative projects with public health agencies.
“Each congressional staffer I spoke with gets that all families want healthy communities to live in, businesses want healthy communities to draw employees from, and in some cases—like the tourist-based economies of New England—it is really obvious that things like clean recreational water are essential,” Todd says.
“The funding announcement is not just important to us at SPH, but to a whole bunch of school and community partners and their work around New England,” she says. “The trust we are building with health departments and community partners is really the reason for the award. They support NEPHTC because they recognize that their employees are trying to figure out the way to upstream solutions, and that training is one important method for supporting their employees in complex times.”
Founded in California in 1937, the National Environmental Health Organization (NEHA) serves 5,000 members to advance the environmental health and protection profession. NEHA provides training and resources for continuing, holds an annual conference, fosters networking and career growth, and publishes the Journal of Environmental Health.