How Kentucky Is Using Academic Partnerships to Build a Future-Ready Public Health Workforce
Success StoriesThe Kentucky Department for Public Health (KDPH) is leveraging academic partnerships to ensure its workers have the training and skills needed to do their jobs well—and these partnerships were made possible through the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG). In this video, Deena Bell, Human Services Program Supervisor at KDPH, shares how PHIG funding has transformed workforce development across her state.
With 13 formal academic partnerships now in place, Kentucky can offer public health learning pathways to high schoolers, college students, and established public health professionals seeking to upskill and learn the latest research. 53 staff members have participated in the tuition assistance program, with eight earning degrees and one receiving a leadership certificate. Health department workers are growing their expertise in biostatistics, epidemiology, disease tracking, informatics, and cybersecurity—all critical skill sets to protect and promote the health of Kentucky communities while keeping personal health data secure.
This level of investment in public health professionals hasn’t been seen in over 10 years. But as Deena points out, it’s bigger than workforce development. The people showing up to serve Kentucky citizens every day are also Kentuckians themselves. Supporting them in reaching their full potential isn’t a side benefit of KDPH’s mission–it’s the mission.
Video Transcript
The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
How have you used PHIG funding?
We have been able to use PHIG funding in many ways to benefit our current workforce by investing in providing educational pathways and pathways for further training and development. Some of the things that we’ve been able to do are establish training programs to where they have structured content to be able to follow, to develop soft skills such as leadership and communications, Microsoft 365 skills, public health preparedness, etc. Before, we had a handful of project-based partnerships with our university and colleges that were unstructured, informal, and really only offered on an as-needed basis or by word-of-mouth. But now we have a structured approach to these pathways from high school, college, and then to the current workforce, both at a state and local level.
How have you expanded academic partnerships?
Previously, we had just a handful of informal partnerships with our academic partners, and we’ve actually established and grown that to 13 formal partnerships. And those academic institutions offer, with this policy we have via the PHIG funding, we’re able to provide support for up to five courses per academic year.
What kind of skills are your colleagues learning?
These programs are helping our staff gain essential skills in biostatistics and epidemiology; they’re helping our staff to be able to track disease. Some of the skills that are coming back into our workforce from these trainings are informatics and cybersecurity skills, which are important because we have so much data and deal with data every day. So being able to keep that public health information safe is at the foremost of our priorities.
How many staff are participating in these learning pathways?
Of the current workforce, there have been 53 staff members who have participated in the tuition assistance program, so they went back to get further education through our academic partnerships. There have also been eight people who have received a degree, plus one who has received a certificate in leadership from one of our academic partners.
What’s been the impact?
The mission of the Kentucky Department for Public Health is for every citizen to reach their full potential. So these education and training pathways help to develop and unlock the potential of our workforce. And while we’re in the workforce, we’re also citizens of Kentucky. So it’s a twofold mission to really develop and cultivate the people that are the workforce.
What has PHIG funding changed in Kentucky?
The funding through the PHIG grant has been an investment in our public health professionals that they have not seen in over 10 years. And the funding through PHIG has moved programs and moved initiatives in such a way that hasn’t been done in a very long time in public health. And this funding is protecting health and preventing chronic disease and helping us do the many things that public health does every day.