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Certificate program bolsters NYS public health workforce

Gen Meredith, center, associate director of the Cornell Public Health Program, works with colleagues Zoe Wakoff, right, and Katie Lesser, left, in Schurman Hall.
Gen Meredith, center, associate director of the Cornell Public Health Program, works with colleagues Zoe Wakoff, right, and Katie Lesser, left, in Schurman Hall.

As a registered nurse and director of patient services for the Chautauqua County Health Department in western New York, Wendy Douglas conducted case investigations and monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic. The experience laid bare the disparities public health departments are designed to address but not all workers are equipped to encounter.

“Very few of our health department’s employees have any public health background when they start working here, and it sometimes shows,” Douglas said. “For example, there can be a lack of understanding of health equity.”

The issue is nationwide in scale. On-the-job experience is the only source of public health training for most professionals in governmental agencies. Only 14% of those workers have received formal higher education in the field. To close the skills gap that is, in part, responsible for the profession’s decadeslong workforce decline, a team of Cornell faculty members and researchers – led by Gen Meredith, an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Public and Ecosystem Health – partnered with eCornell to launch the university’s Public Health Essentials online certificate program.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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