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Paulani Mui:
This poster discusses lessons from Maryland on prioritizing, developing, and investing in comprehensive strategies and tools to support its public health workforce and shares strategies on how to act now to protect public health from within. Maryland’s public health workforce faces challenges similar to those seen nationally, around political polarization, funding cuts, workforce shortages, and burnout, making it vital to focus on employee satisfaction, well-being, and retention to maintain a strong and effective workforce.

The Johns Hopkins University developed the “Putting Our People First Discussion Guide,” a customizable tool for public health agencies to address worker needs and advance a culture of worker well-being. We pilot tested the guide with three
local health departments from 2024 to 2025, participating sites represented both urban and rural areas, as well as different department sizes, and varied in their progress toward advancing employee well-being, level of leadership involvement, and motivations for pilot participation.

In terms of key takeaways from the pilot, we found that local health department employees demonstrate strong public health mission orientation and community service, and many employees remain highly motivated to advance public health despite structural and resource limitations. There were three key areas identified for improvement. The first is communication, specifically the need to increase communication, consistency, transparency, and accountability between state and local health departments and within agencies. The second is prioritization of worker well-being, particularly around fostering a people- first culture that values and recognizes workers and invests in leadership training and support. And the third is infrastructure and policies, specifically the need to advance workforce development opportunities, prioritize worker safety and facilities maintenance, and improve hiring pathways and processes.

Here are some suggestions for how you might translate these findings into actions in your workforce development plan. For communications, consider establishing a workforce development committee or other entity to prioritize workforce issues, and also developing and implementing an internal communications plan to advance transparency. To prioritize worker well-being, consider utilizing inclusive practices, supporting long-term career growth with continuing education opportunities, and using feedback tools to monitor and improve staff satisfaction. And finally, for infrastructure and policies, consider assessing workforce capacity to address gaps in workforce burdens, developing and communicating career pathways, prioritizing safe and supportive work environments, and applying quality improvement strategies to improve efficiency and streamline processes. Funding for this project was provided by the CDC and the Johns Hopkins POE Total Worker Health Center in mental health. Thank you.