How Utah is Leveraging University Partnerships to Train, Retain, and Recruit Public Health Workers
Success StoriesThe COVID-19 pandemic pushed many public health workers across the country to their limits, and Utah was no exception. Burnout was widespread, turnover was high, and Utah faced an urgent need to bolster its public health workforce at both the state and local levels. With support from the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG), the Utah Department of Health and Human Services (Utah DHHS) got to work. PHIG Director Jenny Starley shares how Utah used PHIG funding to hire staff to address two critical needs: workforce retention and recruitment.
To address retention, Utah DHHS launched the Public Health Training Hub, a centralized, publicly accessible resource on the Utah DHHS website that provides a curated list of national and state professional development opportunities and resources, public health conferences, scholarships, and continuing education pathways for public health professionals. The goal is to give workers easy access to the tools they need to grow in their careers.
On the recruitment side, Utah is building a student pipeline. By developing an academic health department through a memorandum of understanding with the University of Utah, Salt Lake County Health Department, and Utah DHHS, Starley and her team are creating pathways for students to explore public health careers through fellowships, practicums, and internships at both the state and local levels. A workforce that is prepared, supported, and continuously developing is one that is ready to meet today’s public health needs, and ready for tomorrow’s public health threats. And by creating visible pathways into public health careers, the state is building a pipeline that keeps homegrown talent in the workforce for years to come
Video Transcript
The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
What was happening in Utah before PHIG?
Prior to PHIG funding, our workforce was extremely burnt out from the COVID response, and there was a huge need to really bolster our workforce, work on retention strategies, and find ways to bring additional people into the public health workforce. We had lost a lot of employees — really good employees — because of the stress of the COVID response.
How are you supporting Utah’s public health workforce?
One of the very first things that we did with PHIG funding was address an information gap on our PHIG team. There was so much information coming at us, and what we were receiving and sharing wasn’t being sent out to everyone. So we thought one of the best ways to solve that problem was to begin curating a list of national public health professional development resources coming in through our partners, as well as free and paid training opportunities based on public health professions. We also have all of these wonderful state associations and resources, but a lot of that information wasn’t being sent out either. So we thought, “Let’s curate this information and put it all together on a website.” We call it our Public Health Training Hub. It’s on our Utah Department of Health and Human Services website, so anyone can go to it and find resources and tools to help support their workforce and professional development. The Public Health Infrastructure Grant allowed us to hire the people to help make that happen.
How are you building a pipeline to the workforce?
We also saw a definite gap in recruitment. We have some amazing universities in the state of Utah, and the Utah Department of Health and Human Services is right in Salt Lake City, at our capital. So we decided to put together an academic health department. We’re currently working on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the University of Utah, Salt Lake County Health Department, and the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. Our first step in that academic health department is creating an MOU to offer opportunities for University of Utah students to learn more about public health, whether through a fellowship, practicum, or internship. And not only through those programs, but also to create opportunities for students to learn about different professions within the public health sector at both the state and local levels.
Why is a workforce pipeline important?
We want students in Utah to know what public health opportunities are available to them. Even though there are more than enough qualified students, there is a lack of awareness and knowledge about these opportunities. So we want to recruit our students, keep them in Utah, and help bolster our economy and our workforce.
How are you retaining your workforce?
The MOU will help build up and bolster our workforce, but there’s also the retention aspect. Professional development is extremely important to our workforce. We want them to have resources they can utilize even when public health doesn’t have funding available to support professional development. Having free resources available gives people working in our public health workforce the opportunity to keep moving forward in public health without having to leave the state. The Public Health Training Hub helps substantially with retention. That also includes letting staff know about national scholarship opportunities they may not have otherwise privy to. We try to curate all of these opportunities on the Public Health Training Hub to help build up professional development, retain the employees we have, and ultimately build up our economy in general.
Why is PHIG so important to Utah?
It’s never been done before. This type of flexibility from the federal government is unprecedented. It gives states a huge opportunity to address those gaps in public health that they may not have been able to address through state funding alone. All of our work revolves around supporting our community and making sure we have a healthy and safe environment for everyone who lives and works in Utah. PHIG gives us that opportunity, and we never had it before — so it’s been really exceptional to be a part of.