The New England Public Health Training Center (NEPHTC) had the opportunity to attend and present two poster sessions at this year’s NACCHO 360 conference in Detroit, Michigan.

Annually, NACCHO 360 is the largest convening of local health department leaders and public health professionals in the United States, offering the opportunity to learn, network, and share experiences and best practices across local health departments. From July 23-26, the public health community will gathered to explore the conference theme, “Heard it Through the Grapevine: Public Health Partnerships, Collaboration, and Innovation.”

The first poster, “How can a student pathway program integrate quality improvement for increasing diversity?” offered a “road-map” on integrating and analyzing diversity goals into a health equity student pathways program. The program’s impact on disparity is twofold: increasing equity focused placement opportunities for under-represented minority students and capacity building for students to increase their confidence and competence to work with diverse communities.

Candice Bangham, Senior Program Manager, presented the poster and shared, “many students who were in current student pathway programs were really interested to learn about these initiatives to improve the health equity within the student applications.”

The second poster was a collaboration between multiple Public Health Training Center’s (Region1, 5, and 8), discussing “Regional Approaches to Diversity: Three Models of Student Pathway Programs to Build the Public Health Workforce in the Community’s Image”. This session addressed practical aspects of diversifying the public health workforce through Student Pathway Programs mindful of place-specific needs. It explored three regional models from CEPH-accredited schools’ Public Health Training Centers (PHTCs), highlighting efforts to learn about disparities, improve language, build new relationships with and support divers and disadvantaged students. 

Tricia Janulewicz, Principal Investigator of NEPHTC, noted that “Student Pathway Programs are having a tremendous impact on our public health workforce and it is critically important to discuss how these approaches overlap, but are distinct, so that we can learn from each other and continue to improve this program.”