947: PH Workforce Survey, STI Education Credits

SUMMER JOHNSON: 

This is the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition for Tuesday, July 15, 2025. I'm Summer Johnson. Now, today's news from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

BRIAN CASTRUCCI: 

PH WINS is not just a survey and a bunch of peer-reviewed papers. It's a tool that really helps public health employees. It allows them to contextualize their personal experiences and really make meaningful improvements.

JOHNSON: 

The Public Health Workforce Interest and Needs Survey, or PH WINS, measures the experiences of individual public health employees to determine the needs of the local and state governmental public health workforce. de Beaumont Foundation's president and CEO, Dr. Brian Castrucci explains how the survey can help public health departments.

CASTRUCCI: 

It really offers a road map. You can use these data to inform your strategic and workforce development plans, including PHAB accreditation, allows you to tailor training to match the gaps of your particular workforce, helps inform benchmarks that your department's workforce may be aiming for.

JOHNSON: 

The most recent survey, which reports on data from 2024, found that a quarter of the workforce is 35 years old and younger. Although a large proportion have prior public health training, many aren't planning to stick around.

CASTRUCCI: 

Nearly 30% of those young professionals say they intend to leave their agency within the next year. And nationally, over 70% of state and local governmental public health workers report experiencing symptoms of burnout. We need to focus on retention, especially for young public health workers, just as much as recruitment for the future workforce.

JOHNSON: 

This year, the group is launching insights to action resources for health departments to act upon the survey's data.

CASTRUCCI: 

These tools will be embedded into the new and improved Public Health WINS dashboards, allowing health departments to view, interpret, and act on their data. This will help empower our managers and our leaders in our state and local health departments to help build the best environment for what we hope will be the best workforce leading us into the future.

JOHNSON: 

You can check out the link in the show notes to learn more about these resources.

The University of Washington has developed an online curriculum to provide reliable STD education to students and healthcare providers who are looking to learn more. Dr. David Spach is editor-in-chief of the National STD [Curriculum].

DAVID SPACH: 

I think what we're really trying to accomplish with this as well, from a public health standpoint, is to really bring in a broad range of the health care professional team who all can have training and play an impact in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections.

JOHNSON: 

Spach says that the easily accessible, modular content is designed to fill a gap in resources, giving users the option to track their progress and earn continuing education credits.

SPACH: 

There's really three main features on the curriculum for learners and for people who are just visiting the site. And these are our main lesson topics, which is really the bread and butter of the curriculum. There's then this interactive, sort of board review style question bank. And then third, there's an STD podcast.

JOHNSON: 

The site, which has been widely accessed, both throughout the United States and globally, now has more than 110,000 registered learners.

SPACH: 

When they go and they log on the site, they spend an average of approximately an hour and 50 minutes each time they go on the site. So, people are really engaged when they're doing the online learning modules, we've now given out more than 450,000 continuing education credits, so we know that it is serving a need that's out there.

JOHNSON: 

You can visit the site yourself by clicking on the link in the show notes.

In ASTHO membership news, ASTHO alum, Dr. Tomás Aragón has been appointed to be an impact fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Aragón joins nine other public health leaders as fellows of the second cohort, and the group will launch impactful projects and share their expertise with the school's students and scholars in the upcoming academic year. Aragón served as director of the California Department of Public Health and [as] state public health officer. Find out more about that program in the show notes.

Also on deck, ASTHO is hosting a webinar next Thursday, July 24 to discuss effective communication strategies for public health messaging. Learn which tools can boost visibility, how to engage with the media and more. You can register for the event; just head to the link in the show notes.

Finally, a new ASTHO toolkit is available for states to strengthen immunization infrastructure by partnering with Community Action Agencies. Boost the success of public health initiatives by collaborating with the community action network. You can find that resource through a link in the show notes.

That'll do it for today. We're back tomorrow morning with more ASTHO news and information. I'm Summer Johnson, you're listening to the award-winning Public Health Review Morning Edition. Have a great day.