Lisa McCormick, DrPHPublic health experts from the University of Alabama at Birmingham will help determine what training the public health workforce across the eight states of Region IV need to address current priority health issues. The School of Public Health was funded to be a technical assistance provider for the Health Resource and Services Administration (HRSA)’s Region IV Public Health Training Center (PHTC), which is based at Emory University in Atlanta.
As a technical assistance provider, UAB will work with the state and local health departments across Alabama and seven other states to make sure employees are receiving proper training to increase knowledge and competence in needed strategic skills such as leadership, communication, systems thinking, and finance and budgeting. Lisa McCormick, DrPH, associate dean for Public Health Practice, will lead the center’s assessment activities and oversee all evaluation efforts for the center and its community-based training partners.
“I look forward to working with the Region IV PHTC and HRSA over the next four years to paint a better picture of state, local and tribal health department workforce development needs,” McCormick said. “This work will assist HRSA, the Region IV PHTC and its community-based training partners in developing a strategy to meet the region’s workforce development goals.”
As a technical assistance provider, UAB will continue the partnership between the university and the Alabama Department of Public Health, Jefferson County Department of Health and the Alabama Area Health Education Center. These partnerships give public health practitioners an opportunity to voice continuing education needs to ensure that health departments have the strategic skills needed to address public health priority issues in the communities they serve.
“I am grateful to have Dr. McCormick and her colleagues at UAB as partners,” said Moose Alperin, Ed.D., principal investigator for the Region IV PHTC. “With their leadership, the Region IV PHTC will be able address the myriad challenges, both current and emerging, that are faced by the public health workforce in the Southeast.”
The Region IV Public Health Training Center primarily serves governmental public health professionals in eight Southeastern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.