Public Health Training Center at Yale Created With $2.6 Million Grant

A new $2.6 million federal grant will allow for a vastly expanded training program for the public health workforce in Connecticut and Rhode Island with a special emphasis on addressing health disparities such as HIV/AIDS in underserved communities.

The grant creates a Public Health Training Center (PHTC) that will be housed at Yale School of Public Health; a satellite center will be located at the Brown University Public Health Program in Providence.  

The two-state program will significantly augment existing public health workforce training and is expected to reach hundreds of practicing public health professionals in a variety of local and state governmental agencies and community health organizations. Students and faculty from Yale, Southern Connecticut State University, the University of Connecticut, Brown and other academic institutions will be engaged in a broad-based effort to improve community health outcomes. Training will cover areas as diverse as technological skills, environmental health, public health leadership, HIV/AIDS and cultural competency.

The four-year grant was awarded in late August by the Health Resources and Services Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“This award will greatly advance public health workforce goals in both Connecticut and Rhode Island.” said Elaine O’Keefe, the center’s principal investigator and executive director of Yale’s Office of Community Health (OCH), where the center will be based. “There is an enormous need for resources to do practical training of relevance to people who are working in the field of public health that will strengthen critical competencies and help them to be more effective at the vital work they perform daily.”

Dean Paul D. Cleary noted that OCH’s mission is to advance public health practice, education, research and community-university partnerships. The training center will be able to draw on varied resources available at the School of Public Health, including faculty expertise in many areas of public health, including HIV/AIDS. 

“Building a strong public health workforce is a vital national priority,” Cleary said. “We are extremely confident that the new training center will substantially improve the public health workforces in Connecticut and Rhode Island.”

Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, professor of epidemiology at Yale and director of the Office of Community Health, said the grant award is a testimony to the hard work and dedication of OCH toward improving the practice of public health in Connecticut and beyond. “I’m very proud of our team and I’m very much looking forward to contributing to the mission of this innovative evidence-based training center,” he said.

This round of federal grants supported 10 new Public Health Training Centers at accredited schools of public health and other public or non-profit institutions, bringing the total number of centers to 37 nationwide. The program seeks to provide the U.S. public health workforce with education and training in diverse and emerging areas. By utilizing distance learning and online tutorials, the expanded national educational network is expected to provide training to approximately 500,000 public health and related health care practitioners.

Prior to receiving the grant, Yale participated in the PHTC that serves New England, based at Boston University, and collaborated with the University of Connecticut, Southern Connecticut State University and numerous other academic and practice-based partners to offer a basic public health  training program through the CT Partnership for Public Health Workforce Development.  Rhode Island had a similar alliance of partners.

The new training center will sustain and further enhance these relationships by increasing the resources available to support continuing education as well as practice-based learning experiences for public health students,  said Kathi Traugh, the program’s assistant director.

“The new center will enable us to improve access to training for busy practitioners by expanding our educational offerings and providing more instruction using distance learning formats,” Traugh said.  “Local health agencies and communities will benefit from increased opportunities to collaborate with MPH students and faculty on needed projects.”

Michael Greenwood