Valerie Yeager
ProfessorHealth Policy and Management and
Center for Health Policy
ude[dot]ui[at]regaeyv
Public Health Systems Research: Workforce Development, Recruitment and Retention, and Hiring Laws
I am a public health systems and services researcher. In 2020, I co-led an assessment of Indiana's public health system. This report was leveraged by Governor Holcomb to establish a Public Health Commission to make recommendations for strengthening public health in Indiana. Following the Governor’s Public Health Commission Report, I conducted the first comprehensive public health workforce assessment in Indiana. The 2022 Local Health Department assessment has drawn national attention from other state and local health departments seeking guidance on replicating our process. I made all of our assessment tools available via the IU Fairbanks School of Public Health website and led the development of a national webinar in partnership with ASTHO, NACCHO, and PHAB to share process insights and lessons learned and to hear from a state and a local leader about the how they are using the findings to strengthen the workforce in their organizations. Over 300 people registered for the webinar. I also published a peer-reviewed research brief on our workforce assessment process and the lessons from this experience. Lastly, to make the findings of the workforce assessment helpful to the Local Health Departments (LHDs), we developed an individual report for each of the 92 LHDs that participated. Reports compared findings for that LHD to the other Indiana LHDs serving similarly sized populations. We worked with LHDs to ensure that the data provided was useful to their planning and advocacy needs. Lastly, I just completed a legal epidemiology study of the state civil service laws that govern the hiring of governmental public health employees. It is under peer review now. Findings from this study are being presented in an upcoming national webinar led by the Consortium for Workforce Research in Public Health in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and other national partners.