The 140th American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting took place in San Francisco, CA on October 27-31, 2012, and focused on “Prevention and Wellness Across the Life Span.” Many meeting attendees were seeking tools and resources that could complement workforce training amidst an era of budget cuts and shortfalls.

At APHA, TRAIN participated in a roundtable discussion with a presentation on “TRAIN: Helping the Public Health Workforce Do More With Less.” Discussion centered on how TRAIN creates the space to build upon the strength of partnerships between public health agencies, organizations, and academic institutions to actively share competency-based training, learning information, resources, and training programs through one uniform system – TRAIN. Through increasingly innovative technology and improving preparedness practices, TRAIN provides the public health workforce with a communal venue to enhance knowledge and skills while also supporting collaboration and cooperation through economies of scale to add value to the return on investment into public health workforce training.

As the strength of the nation’s public health system depends on workforce capacity, the availability of and access to effective and efficient competency-based training becomes increasingly critical. TRAIN, the premier learning management system for public health professionals, offers public health agencies, organizations, and academic institutions the opportunity to collaborate on the development of materials to supplement traditional public health training.. TRAIN, currently comprised of 25 states and three national organizations (Medical Reserve Corps, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine), is rapidly expanding and has surpassed 600,000 registered learners, with nearly 4,000 providers of training having posted more than 28,000 trainings. For providers of training, TRAIN offers an array of tools to support and measure public health training, including the ability to market to one of the largest online concentrations of public health professionals, limit course access, setup pre- and post-assessments, and design course evaluations. Furthermore, TRAIN integrates the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals and Public Health Preparedness and Response Core Competency Model, standards that outline skills that may be beneficial in the practice of public health, allowing providers to indicate which competencies their trainings meet. By working together, public health agencies, organizations, and academic institutions can promote increased training of the public health workforce.

To learn more about TRAIN, inquire about how to bring TRAIN to your public health agency, organization, or academic institution and explore the TRAIN eBook!