Tulane Receives $3.25 Million Grant to Train Public Health Workers

The Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine has received a five-year, $3.25 million grant to provide continuing education for state, county and city public health officials. The grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services renews funding for Tulane"s South Central Public Health Training 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 at Birmingham School of Public Health.
“What we"ve been doing for the last ten 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,” says Ann Anderson, the center"s director and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
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. Health officials receiving training view satellite broadcast lectures, interact with instructors online and through teleconferences, and attend on-site workshops. The courses are focused on public health core functions, leadership, and readiness for natural and human-caused emergencies including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, oil spills, epidemics and radiological releases. The curriculum includes training in management, communication, the technical and scientific dimensions of public health issues, and more.
“We"re trying to be proactive, so obviously we have courses around hurricane and natural disaster preparedness and resiliency leadership training,” says Anderson. “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.”