Pennsylvania & Ohio Public Health Training Center

The Pennsylvania & Ohio Public Health Training Center (POPHTC) is a collaborative project with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Public Health Practice. The Center is one of fourteen such centers located in schools of public health across the country funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).  POPHTC’s Ohio presence is within the Office of Workforce Development, College of Public Health (CPH) at The Ohio State University.

POPHTC is charged to "improve the nation's public health systems by strengthening the technical, scientific, managerial, and leadership competencies and capabilities of the current and future public health workforce." POPHTC is designed to address the training needs of current and future public health professionals. Participants in past programs include:

• Nurses
• Health Educators
• Sanitarians
• Social Workers
• Administrators
• Physicians
• Epidemiologists
• Administrative Services Staff
• Students
  
  

  At A Glance

  Number of Trainings: 223 trainings in 8 years Number of People Trained: 7,667 people since 2000 Number of Contact Hours Provided: 37,232 hours across Pennsylvania and Ohio

Management and Supervisory Curriculum

According to a 2008 Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) workforce survey, "by 2012, over 50% of some state health agency workforces will be eligible to retire. The average age of a public health worker in state government is 47." Both the specified needs of agency-based workers and the looming retirement of many senior-level workers point consistently to training needs for leadership, management, and supervision. To address this need, in 2006 POPHTC began focusing efforts on the development of a management and supervisory curriculum for public health professionals. Topics for this curriculum include interviewing, selecting, and coaching employees, analyzing performance problems, managing conflict, motivating and empowering employees, and conducting stress-free performance evaluations. POPHTC is adapting the content of these courses from The Ohio State University Office of Human Resource’s series called Supervisory Training to Enhance Performance (STEP). Three courses are currently complete and others are underdevelopment.

For more information, visit the POPHTC website.