It’s always great to grow, when the engine of growth is demand for your services and partners identifying important public health issues for training.  It’s a little harder to acknowledge that growth comes from pandemic circumstances when all live training has to move online.  Despite certain parts of the workforce being unavailable and working on critical COVID response, NETPHC and partners had another banner year.

In the spring of 2020, many traditional trainings based on competencies and strategic skills were canceled, and after a short pause as public health workforce organizations reassessed their priorities, requests started coming in for new and urgent content, primarily around approaches and latest knowledge on COVID. As larger governmental efforts formed, NEPTHC and other PHTCs provided immediate response to needs, mostly in the form of online webinars, convenings, on everything from the basics of surveillance, to health literacy during COVID, to peer support, to interpreting roles and responsibilities at the state and community level.

Despite the COVID bump, the underlying source of growth for NEPHTC registrations has been the increase in content, working with partners who know their state and local public health issues, and partners helping us sponsor the right organizations to support workforce content beyond our capacity to develop.