The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

What does the Puerto Rico Public Health Institute do?

We see ourselves as conveners. We make sure that we bring resources and reinforce the capacity that we have in Puerto Rico for public health. So we work in collaboration with multiple sectors and hand-in-hand with the communities so that we are able to build intersectoral collaborations, and our purpose is to improve the public health of Puerto Ricans.

As part of the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG), we are technical assistance providers specifically focused on supporting Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

How are you helping health departments?

Through this role of technical assistance, we have been able to connect better with the Puerto Rico Department of Health, and during that relationship and those conversations, it turns out that they needed support with recruitment. Their human resources office felt that they were overwhelmed and that their recruitment process takes too long. When they talked about this, we started thinking about: what could be possible strategies and ideas that we could use to improve their efficiency and make their work easier?

That’s how we came up with the idea of using the ECHO methodology, which stands for Extension for Community Health Outcomes. This is a methodology that was developed in New Mexico to make sure that primary care physicians would receive training from a specialist. We used that model, which has been very effective for training physicians, to train public health personnel. We brought different topics to this series, and one of them was the use of artificial intelligence for human resources. In this way, we would leverage technology and innovation to make sure that our processes are more efficient.

What other topics does the ECHO series explore?

The ECHO sessions covered multiple topics and were built as a series. We had sessions on artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, but with this type of technology and innovation also comes the challenge of navigating change, and how leadership is prepared to manage and communicate those changes is really important in public health. So we had topics on transformational leadership, adaptive leadership, and how to communicate effectively during emergencies — because in Puerto Rico, unfortunately, we are hit constantly by natural disasters. Having our workforce prepared to handle those situations in advance, not while we are in an emergency, is very important. We were able to integrate these types of topics during the ECHO sessions. We also touched on the topic of burnout. Sometimes when we are dealing with crisis, the public health workforce feels really stressed, and how to manage that was part of this training as well.

What’s been the impact?

With these sessions, we were able to cover six different topics, and we were able to reach over 500 people. Many were from the Department of Health, which was our main target — over 100 people from the Department of Health in Puerto Rico were participating — but we also had people from different parts of the United States and even participants from Egypt. It was really interesting to see that we were able to reach different communities. We provided our sessions in both English and Spanish so that they could be more accessible.

The participants were really impressed by the methodology we were using. Many of them expressed that they had never seen a methodology like this, where the didactics are very short and then you have the opportunity to bring cases — real-life cases and experiences. This allows participants to engage with the material and share their own experiences. Something that is really beautiful about the ECHO methodology is that everyone teaches and everyone learns. It’s not only the trainers bringing the topics — it’s also the participants. They also mentioned that they felt the speakers were really capable and knowledgeable about different apps and technologies, and that was really helpful for their development.

Why is this type of training so important?

I think this type of training is critical to building trust. When you have a workforce that is prepared to manage different changes and crises, that instills trust in the public that is listening to them. When you communicate with empathy and with the sense that these changes are part of the process, and when you improve the efficiency of the Department of Health, all those factors really make the population of Puerto Rico feel that they can trust public health officials — and this is very important at these times.

How does ongoing training future-proof the workforce?

I think projects like this should not be just temporary. It should be something that is sustained over time, because we have multiple changes in our workforce. We have new people, people in new roles, and you need constant training. We are in the digital era — there are new technologies arising every day. If you don’t have a system that can provide this kind of capacity building to our workforce, we’re going to be left behind. The private sector is advancing very fast, but the public sector might not be moving at the same pace, and we really need to have constant support for that. As a technical assistance provider, I see that health departments need help with a lot of things and sometimes they are overwhelmed — they don’t even know how to ask for help. By having programs like this that offer the flexibility to just listen to what they need, then we are able to develop the strategies and develop the tools to meet those needs. And that wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t have PHIG.