Our Work
CWORPH is the home of the nation's first HRSA/CDC Public Health Workforce Research Center and the site of numerous other innovative research projects related to public health workforce.
HRSA/CDC Public Health Workforce Research Center
The Public Health Health Workforce Research Center (PHWRC) is a joint initiative between the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Health Services Research Administration (HRSA). This cooperative agreement provides funding over 5 years (2022-2027) for research focused on:
- Evaluating the role(s) of public health occupations in delivering programs, including essential or foundational public health services, across populations.
- Investigating public health workforce composition, data, needs, sufficiency, and distribution including both governmental (i.e., federal, state, local, tribal, territorial) and non-governmental entities.
- Assessing public health workforce development methods including but not limited to recruitment and training models and the outlook and analytics for workforce needs.
- Conducting and evaluating public health workforce implementation scientific research, including identifying evidence-informed strategies and interventions. CWORPH Principal Investigators collaborate with partners to conduct 8-10 studies per year, with guidance and direction from both CDC and HRSA.
Click here to see summaries of Year 1 PHWRC Projects (2022-2023)
Click here to see summaries of Year 2 PHWRC Projects (2023-2024)
Click here to see summaries of Year 3 PHWRC Projects (2024-2025)
The Public Health Workforce Research Center is supported by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by CDC, HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.
Enumeration of the Public Health Workforce
For decades, public health practitioners, policy-makers, and, at times, the public, have asked how many people work in public health. These numbers are important to set a baseline to inform and evaluate workforce infrastructure-building efforts. Yet, the federal government has never systematically answered this question; enumerations of the governmental public health workforce have long been left to non-profits, academics, and others in the field. The reasons for this are many but ultimately reduce to:
- Lack of licensure data for public health officials.
- Disagreement over how to define the taxonomies of public health workers. Public health has attempted to resolve these two issues since 1908, when the first “limited enumeration” of the field was undertaken.
The latest effort, Enumeration 2024, is a collaboration with the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) that aims to build upon recommendations for addressing data challenges while moving forward the methods for enumerating local, state, and federal governmental health employees. The purpose of this project is to expand on previous enumerations by providing three distinct enumeration efforts:
- Total counts enumeration of the full governmental public health workforce
- Occupation-specific enumeration.
- Analyses and enumeration of public health nurses using novel data.
Enumeration of the Public Health Workforce
CDC National Partners Cooperative Agreement
CWORPH is funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Partners Cooperative Agreement, which supports analysis and evaluation related to local governmental public health issues, particularly workforce recruitment and retention. Current projects include a focus on Capacity and Cost Assessments, Community Health Workers, and Burnout.
All Products
2024 State of the Evidence: Employment Choices of Recent Public Health Graduates
This research brief summarizes the evidence regarding employment choices of recent public health graduates. More students are receiving public health degrees than ever before.
Composition of the Public Health Workforce: Distribution, Training, and Tenure
Rural-serving LHDs had a greater staffing proportion of women, less formal public health training, and a smaller proportion of staff with 6 or more years of public health practice experience.
Exploring the Geospatial Variations in the Public Health Workforce: Implications for Diversifying the Supply of Potential Workers in Governmental Settings
The US public health workforce has markedly declined, falling from 500,000 individuals in 1980 to 239,000 by 2022, a trend exacerbated by economic instability and an aging demographic.
Public Health Workforce Survey Data (2016–2021) Related to Employee Turnover: Proposed Methods for Harmonization and Triangulation
Public health workforce numbers are unsustainable at best and dire at worst: based on 2017 and 2019 data, 80,000 FTEs needed to be hired by health departments to provide basic public health foundational services before COVID-19 hit, suggesting that the situation is worse after the mass exodus of public health officials due to the pandemic.
Racial and Ethnic Representation of the Local Public Health Workforce
To describe racial and ethnic representativeness of the local health department (LHD)workforce compared with the populations served.
Expanding Options to Recruit, Grow, and Retain the Public Health Workforce
The public health workforce continues to atrophy due to mass and early retirement, under-funding, slow hiring processes, lack of advancement opportunities, and shifting policies.
Public Health Nurses’ Proficiencies and Training Needs in an Emergency Response: A Cross-Sectional Observational Study
To address gaps in understanding the public health nursing workforce regarding competencies recognized as critical during an emergency response.
It Can’t Just Be About the Money: How to Assure an Adequate Public Health Workforce
The COVID-19 pandemic, along with efforts to address systemic racism and social injustice, has required the public health workforce to mobilize an unprecedented and extensive frontline response while simultaneously delivering core services and addressing natural disasters and other emergent threats.
Salary Disparities in Public Health Occupations: Analysis of Federal Data, 2021–2022
To assess salary differences between workers within key public health occupations in local or state government and workers in the same occupations in the private sector.
Standard Occupational Classification Codes: Gaps in Federal Data on the Public Health Workforce
To determine whether US Department of Labor standard occupational classification (SOC) codes can be used for public health workforce research.
State Laws Governing the Hiring of Public Health Government Employees, 2023 State Laws Governing the Hiring of Public Health Government Employees, 2023 Turn on screen
Governmental public health agencies have experienced longstanding challenges in recruiting individuals at the state and local level. Understanding civil service laws as they relate to the hiring processes is an important component of recruitment and increasing public health workforce capacity.
Retention of Community Health Workers in the Public Health Workforce: Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey, 2017 and 2021
To investigate the organizational factors contributing to the intent of community health workers (CHWs) to quit their jobs in local and state health departments in the United States.