Biosecurity Briefing Subscribe | About | Current Issue | RSS | Archive ASPH Report: Public Health Workforce Shortages to Reach Crisis Conditions By Jennifer Nuzzo, March 7, 2008 At a February 27, 2008, Congressional briefing on Capitol Hill, the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) announced that “the current public health workforce is inadequate to meet the health needs of the U.S. and global population” and that without an “immediate influx of funding for recruitment and training of public health professionals” the U.S. “is facing a major public health workforce crisis that could impact the health of each and every American.”1 This announcement stems from the organization’s first-ever assessment of public health workforce capacity. According to the ASPH report, this impending public health workforce crisis is “a culmination of already documented and forecasted shortages of public health physicians, public health nurses, epidemiologists, health care educators, and administrators and other contributing factors like an expected spike in retirement.” ASPH notes that although the “existence of a significant public health workforce shortage in the U.S. is generally acknowledged,” such shortages are “difficult to quantify, given numerous challenges including inconsistent numeration of the existing workforce and no systematic effort to date to assess national needs.” The ASPH report represents an effort to try and forecast current and future public health needs.2 Specifically, the ASPH assessment notes the following as the key challenges facing the U.S. public health workforce: - In 2000, there were 50,000 fewer public health workers in the United States than in 1980, which has forced today’s “public health workers to do more for more people with fewer resources.”
- 23% of the current public health workforce (more than 110,000 workers) will be eligible to retire by 2012, which will leave “a large void of expertise to be filled.”
- In order to restore the per capita staffing ratios that existed in 1980, the United States will need 250,000 more public health workers by 2020
- “To replenish the workforce and avert the crisis, schools of public health will have to train three times the current number of graduates over the next 12 years.”2
In addition, ASPH reports that as public health workers face “increasingly complex public health challenges,” including the need to “be adequately prepared to handle health threats that could emerge from other nations, such as the spread of infectious diseases,” the U.S. will need “more specialists will be needed in many public health sub-disciplines to address” these threats.1 To help meet the health needs of the U.S. and global population, ASPH recommends the following actions: | 1. “Increase federal funding to support public health professional education, including: | | - degree-oriented public health fellowship programs, as well as for improved hands-on experiences for public health students;
- recruitment of students for dual training opportunities to couple public health graduate training with other health professional training, i.e., medicine, nursing, dentistry and veterinary medicine;
- public health loan repayment programs;
- programs that provide financial support for students enrolled in public health degree programs;
- post-doctoral training opportunities within government agencies for underrepresented minorities who are involved in health disparities research; and,
- loan forgiveness programs for students whose work focuses on the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.”
| | 2. “Build capacity in schools of public health to address the needs of a larger graduate- level student body, as well as: | | - offer training opportunities for current professionals and undergraduate students; and
- address racial/ethnic and geographic disparities.”
| | 3. “Establish a U.S. Global Health Service to coordinate U.S. efforts to assist in international areas of need.”
| | 4. “Establish an institutionalized, periodic enumeration of the public health workforce to more accurately identify current and future public health workforce needs.”2 |
In an ASPH press release, Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health and chair-elect of ASPH, said that the ASPH report is evidence that “Unless we act now to increase the quality and quantity of public health professionals, we will soon be ill-equipped to identify public health crises and respond decisively.”1 References - More than 250,000 additional public health workers needed by 2020 to avert public health crisis [news release]. Washington, DC: Association of Schools of Public Health; February 27, 2008. http://www.asph.org/UserFiles/FINALASPHWorkforceRelease.pdf. Accessed March 7, 2008.
- Association of Schools of Public Health. Confronting the public health workforce crisis: ASPH statement on the public health workforce. February 2008. http://www.asph.org/UserFiles/PHWFShortage0208.pdf. Accessed March 7, 2008.
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