December 6, 2022 – The Wisconsin DHS announced it has been awarded a $45 million grant to assess the statewide public health system to help build a stronger public health workforce through retention, recruitment, and training efforts. The funding is part of $3.2 billion being awarded from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to state, local, and territorial jurisdictions across the U.S. to support the public health workforce and infrastructure nationwide.
The five-year investment will help to strengthen the foundation of public health in the state by supporting a robust assessment of Wisconsin’s multi-layered public health system to evaluate the system-wide structure, including staffing levels, capacity, and workforce well-being. In addition, the funding will support strategies to recruit, prepare, and retain a diverse public health workforce at the state, local, and tribal levels, including efforts to support recruitment pipelines, strengthen diversity and wellbeing of existing workers, and provide ongoing training in core competencies to the workforce. Approximately 40% of the workforce funding will be allocated to local and tribal health departments.
These investments into efforts to make sustainable impacts on the size, diversity, and skills of the public health workforce will be designed to ensure that those who work in Wisconsin’s public health system will have the capacity to deliver and support equitable health outcomes for all people across Wisconsin.