The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are featuring training for public health and health care providers designed by the School of Public Health’s New England Public Health Training Center (NEPTHC).

The featured course, Onboarding New Employees, will be available on the CDC Learning Connection website through early February. This is the fifth time since 2018 that a NEPHTC course has been featured on the Learning Connection. 

Onboarding New Employees was initially developed by Kathleen MacVarish, associate professor of the practice in environmental health, as part of a public health management curriculum: Managing Effectively in Today’s Public Health Environment.  In addition to her work at NEPHTC, MacVarish is the former PI of two BU Training Centers: the Local Public Health Institute (LPHI), and the School Health Institute for Education and Leadership Development (SHIELD)

“The development of this course was funded by both NEPTHC and the LPHI,” says Ojaswini Bakshi, program manager for LPHI.  “Courses that are practical and short, like this one, tend to be popular with the workforce when a critical need arises.  We often see a surge in use in our courses when they align with a national public health need.”

The CDC Learning Connection is designed to help public health and healthcare professionals stay informed about trainings from CDC, other federal agencies, and federally funded partners. Each month, the site features trainings promoted via newsletter, social media, and partner outreach.

“Since we work with our workforce audiences every day, we’ve felt the well-documented stress experienced by the workforce in our live training and in our partnerships,” says Karla Todd Barrett, Senior Program Manager Training Specialist, NEPHTC. “Fortunately, there is new funding for investing in the workforce, at least for a few years, which is a huge opportunity to improve capacity and skills, and the reason the CDC contacted NEPHTC about featuring the training.”

The 10 regional training centers are located at top universities throughout the US and focus on evidence-based applied practice and workforce development to ensure public health professionals have access to convenient, flexible ways to meet their learning goals.

“This is one small support of many generated by the Public Health Training Centers for the hiring surge across the country,” says Tricia Janulewicz, current PI of NEPHTC.  “The Public Health Training Centers (PHTC), together with their partners, are actively generating other training and support assets, such as the Region 2 PHTC’s (at Columbia University) Recruitment Toolkit, and the Region 5 PHTC’s (at University of Michigan) Model Job Description Project.”