Public health workforce shortage looming

A study by the Association of Schools of Public Health estimates that a quarter of a million more public health workers will be needed in the United States in the next 12 years. The shortage is attributed to both a steady dwindling of about 50,000 workers over the past two decades and the nearly 110,000 workers who are expected to retire by 2012 (Source: "Confronting the Public Health Workforce Crisis: ASPH Statement on the Public Health Workforce," June, 2008).

Because of the shortage, ASPH says public health departments will have to continue to take on larger work loads with fewer workers. To counter the shortage, ASPH calculates that schools of public health would have to triple the number of its current graduates over the next 12 years.

To address the shortage in Ohio, the Ohio State University College of Public Health and the state of Ohio are sponsoring the annual two-week Summer Program in Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiological Methods to better train workers already in the field. This year’s program, set to take place from July 14 to July 25, will teach about 300 public health workers (125 of whom have been sponsored by the Health Policy Institute of Ohio) five core courses with an emphasis on applied methods: Field Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Man-Made and Natual Disaster Epidemiology, Environmental Epidemiology and Intermediate Epidemiology Methods.