$3.25 Million Grant for Public Health Training

Arthur Nead anead@tulane.edu
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Training future leaders for natural and human-caused emergencies — hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, oil spills, epidemics and radiological releases — will continue at the South Central Public Health Training Center at Tulane with a $3.25 million grant to educate state, county and city public health officials, says center director Ann Anderson.

Ann Anderson directs the South Central Public Health Training Center at Tulane, which provides training for health officials through satellite broadcast lectures and on-site workshops. (Photo by Rick Olivier)

The Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine received the five-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that renews funding for the center, which offers continuing training to public health workers throughout Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Tulane is partnered in the project with the University of Alabama–Birmingham School of Public Health.

“We're trying to be proactive, so obviously we have courses around hurricane and natural disaster preparedness and resiliency leadership training,” says Anderson, who also is senior associate dean for academic affairs. “Our original target was the health agencies in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, but because we've been doing this for so long and we have such a catalog of distance education courses, we really are a national public health training resource.”

Health officials receiving training view satellite broadcast lectures, interact with instructors online and through teleconferences, and attend on-site workshops. The curriculum includes training in management, communication, the technical and scientific dimensions of public health issues, and more.

The South Central Public Health Training Center is one of 33 regionally based institutions established throughout the country by the federal government to provide training for public health officials.

“What we've been doing for the last 10 years — and we'll continue to do for the next five — is provide professional workforce development training for public health professionals, primarily from state and local health agencies,” Anderson says.