Program Income Kentucky Appalachia Public Health Training Center

The primary mission of the Kentucky and Appalachia Public Health Training Center (KAPHTC) is to expand partnerships and critical linkages among state and local practice, academic partners in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the Central Appalachian region to provide improved access to education and training for the current and future public health workforce. We also seek to strengthen competence, performance, and capacity to improve the nation’s public health system. Our specific goals include conducting an assessment of needs and assets; strengthening local and state academic and practice partners’ capacity for public health workforce education and training, including the specific focus on the needs of Appalachia; developing and implementing competency-based education programs and learning products to strengthen workforce competency and capacity to perform essential public health services; performing evaluation and research to demonstrate impact of education and training; and providing technical assistance and share expertise and resources with other PHTC collaborators in the region and the national PHTC Network. We have created regional partnerships with other HRSA funded centers, which has helped to maximize benefit and impact while avoiding duplication of effort. Within the Commonwealth, we have a strong academic and practice partnership. The KAPHTC has built on that partnership to further expand regional capacity, as well as to support the PHTC Network capacity to accomplish national public health strategic workforce development objectives. The KAPHTC will continue to develop training for the existing public health workforce, focusing largely on community engagement and capacity building, public health accreditation, and quality improvement. We will also continue to improve access to public health training and resources for those individuals in public health practice in Kentucky’s medically underserved rural communities, most notably Appalachia. We recently completed our statewide public health workforce training needs assessment. The assessment was administered to state and local public health department employees. 52% of the public health workforce completed the assessment, measuring their level of competence for each of the Council on Linkages Core Public Health Competencies. Results of the needs assessment will guide us as we design and implement competency-based education and training programs to meet immediate and assessed needs. We intend to use the needs assessment to guide career planning through the increased use of the “My Training Plan” on Kentucky’s TRAIN learning management system and provide in-depth analysis to local health departments to assist workforce development planning on an as needed basis. The KAPHTC has been closely collaborating with the Kentucky Department for Public Health (KDPH), Kentucky Health Department Association (KHDA), KHDA’s Accreditation Coordinators Workgroup, and the KDPH’s Center for Performance Management to share resources and market our services to the workforce. Together we are creating a common voice to promote our goals and initiatives and become more visible within the Commonwealth as a viable resource/avenue to help increase organizational effectiveness. The KAPHTC has been effectively marketing our available resources to help public health agencies position themselves for the future by offering our expertise with quality improvement initiatives, community health needs assessments, strategic planning, and local board of health evaluations. In these challenging economic times, defined by a lack of access to available and affordable resources, the KAPHTC has positioned itself to drive and support key issues, such as public health accreditation and quality improvement. We have the resources and the staff experience to help public health agencies plan for the future and accomplish their goals.