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Q & A
with Nikole Allen |
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Interviewer:
Madeline Roberts, PhD, MPH EpiMonitor: You serve as Associate Director of the fellowship program at Yale School of Public Health, which is in its first year of operation. Could you tell us a bit about the program and how the idea for this partnership between Yale SPH and the Connecticut Department of Public Health first began? NA: The CT Public Health Fellowship Program is an extension of Yale School of Public Health and the Office of Public Health Practice’s (OPHP) long-standing relationship with Connecticut’s Department of Public Health (DPH) on workforce development. Specifically, OPHP has served as the administrative entity for the New England Public Health Training Center (NEPHTC) in Connecticut for over 20 years and has spearheaded the Connecticut Partnership for Public Health Workforce Development, a stakeholder group, which has served both as an advisory body to NEPHTC’s activities and as a structure that facilitates statewide networking and collaboration on professional development activities. This history informed the CT PHFP and the other component of this initiative, the Public Health Training Academy of CT (PHTAC). Lessons learned and best practices were incorporated into this new program. Specifically, the NEPHTC’s Health Equity Stipend Program, which has been managed through YSPH for many years, provided the blueprint for CT PHFP processes. As director for the fellowship program, I am able to leverage OPHP’s direct connection with local health and community organizations as well as OPHP’s extensive expertise in co-designing student practice experiences and was able to support the development of high-quality student placements. At present, the CT PHFP is just one of the many ways the DPH is investing in the current and future public health workforce. This new fellowship program really got started in January 2023 with the ambitious goal of recruiting and supporting 70 students for internships within the state public health department, Connecticut’s 60 local health agencies, and other community-based agencies. What makes this work exciting is that students are eagerly seeking experience to complete their programs, launch their careers and start making an impact in their communities. The academic programs in the state have welcomed the extra support in guiding the student to robust learning opportunities, particularly if there is a requirement by the program for practice experience. The local health preceptors have told me that the students working alongside the staff bring in energy and new ideas that can benefit the team. On top of that, it provides critical skill development for early career professionals to supervisor and manage the students’ contributions to the agency. CT PHFP sits in the middle of all these partners helping to connect students to agencies and think critically about how to improve the system and reduce barriers to these bi-directional engagement opportunities for all involved. EpiMonitor: What kind of public health projects are current fellows engaged in? NA: The field of public health is incredibly broad, and that can be seen through the projects the fellows are engaged in with local health, the state, and community-based organizations. There is a University of Connecticut student who spent the summer analyzing housing certification programs to improve safe housing conditions for renters, a Southern Connecticut State University student is promoting a breastfeeding friendly workplace initiative, a Western Connecticut State University student conducting research on the chronic and communicable diseases and an Eastern Connecticut State University student implementing and assessing community health education programming. These projects just scratch the surface. There are fellows supporting projects on sexual reproductive health education initiatives, harm reduction interventions, climate change response planning, health facility acquired infections tracking, water and food borne disease surveillance, community vaccination rapid assessments, reviewing municipal health ordinances, generating new intentional health communication resources. Beyond the specific tasks involved, they are based within an agency where they are able observe how the public health services functions and how they may continue to continual improvement in the future. To see more about the individual fellows and their host agency, visit CT Public Health Fellows. EpiMonitor: What types of long-term opportunities could fellows be positioned for when they exit the program? NA: We aim to ensure that the fellows have an experience that exposes them to new aspects or perspectives in the field and that they complete their fellowship feeling more confident in the core competencies of public health practice. Equally important, I hope they have a new connection to public health, that might be to a specific agency or a preceptor that remains a mentor or stays within the student professional network in the future or connection to other fellows in the program. For the duration of the program, these fellows will be in our network. That may be informal career coaching, networking, or sharing professional network events in the state. I’d like to see the fellows end up in a job that matches their passions and skills. We hope more students will find that opportunity in the public health field and here in the nutmeg state. If they end up in a related field, they will retain this public health exposure and that may help them work across disciplines in productive ways throughout their careers. EpiMonitor: Have there been any challenges you all have encountered or that you anticipate in the future? NA: One question our team is looking at is how to create equity. One aspect of this is focused on the student to ensure underrepresented voices are in the field of public health and that the diversity of the workforce better represents the general population of the state. This is also about reducing the barriers for students to find placements. What I hear from students is that there isn’t a list. There is no way to know if a local health department is accepting interns. In addition, the host agency or the academic institution may require a formal learning agreement before the students can start, this is a lot for a student to navigate for what might be a volunteer internship on the other side of the state. The other piece is about creating equity or reducing burden for the host agencies and preceptors. Finding a student can take time and an individual project at a health agency may not have the extra bandwidth to ensure that the internship opportunity is promoted in a way to encourage a diverse range of applicants from different academic programs and backgrounds. Once a student is identified, hosting a student takes effort and intention on behalf of the host agency and the staff preceptors to ensure the student has a meaningful learning experience. We are looking to other states to see how they support smaller local health agencies to have the access and opportunity to host students similar to the larger health departments closer to higher education institutions in the state. In this way we may be able to reduce the barriers for local health agencies to engage with students in an intentional way. I’d also like to explore the possibility of embedding student supervision into employee engagement and continuing education efforts. I think this could be an additional way to celebrate and reward staff who mentor students as well as elevate the importance of this for the future of the workforce and the sustainability of these initiatives. EpiMonitor: Public health as a field has experienced an inordinate amount of challenges to contend with since 2020. What are some of your hopes for the future of the program specifically and for public health more generally? NA: Again, public health is so broad and recent public health emergencies of international concern-from Ebola Viral Disease to COVID19 and climate change–put public health front and center. This intense spotlight can exacerbate the normal ebbs and flows of funding - right now, workforce development has a national focus and funding attached to it through federal Public Health Infrastructure Grants. In my experience, changing and building an intentional workforce requires a long view. Alongside the Office of Public Health Workforce Development and other partners around the state, we are discussing getting secondary, community college, and university students across disciplines interested and early experiences in public health. At the same time DPH and PHTAC are focused on training advancement and workplace culture changes to empower and sustain the current workforce to reduce employee exits prior to retirement. The real impact of workforce initiatives is gradual and takes years of sustained investment to cultivate an intentional public health workforce for the state and–more broadly–in the United States. Just like everything in public health, partnership can be one tool to sustain impact and leverage resources, and CT PHFP is a good example of DPH leveraging resources in the state at academic institutions such as the Yale School of Public Health. ■ |
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