Enumeration of the Public Health Workforce in New York State: Workforce Changes in the Wake of COVID-19

Abstract

The governmental public health workforce in the United States has faced staffing shortages for over a decade that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess this critical issue, the Region 2 Public Health Training Center collaborated with the New York State Association of County Health Officials to enumerate the city and county public health workforce in New York State. The organizations used an online survey to: (1) count employees and full-time equivalent (FTEs) staff in local health departments in 2021; (2) assess workforce trends since the COVID-19 pandemic; and, (3) identify challenges local health departments encounter in recruiting and retaining qualified public health workers. To assess trends, findings were compared with secondary data from 2019. Despite playing a central role in COVID-19 mitigation, local health departments experienced no overall increase in staffing in 2021 compared to 2019, with many health departments experiencing large increases in vacant positions. Recruitment challenges include noncompetitive salaries, difficulties finding qualified candidates, and lengthy hiring processes. This study complements accumulating evidence indicating that long-term investment in local public health infrastructure is needed to bolster the workforce and ensure that communities are protected from current and future health threats.

Equity and trend predictions of human resources for health allocation at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in China, 2005-2020

“…While the de nition of the public health workforce is not entirely consistent in each country, the lack of a public health workforce is a common problem worldwide. For example, the public health workforce decreased by nearly 10% from 2012 to 2019 in the United States [25]. Low wages and a lack of long-term career opportunities are the main reasons for the decline in the global public health workforce [30], and China's public health workforce faces the same dilemma.…”

“…When analyzing the inequality in CDC HRH across regions, the combination of the Gini coe cient and aggregation degree is more appropriate. Indeed, inadequate and unequal HRH is prevalent in many countries [21,25]and solving this issue has become a priority in recent years. However, the quality of human resources has been neglected, and relevant research is lacking.…”

Challenges to Global Health Emerging from the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…There were multiple issues that put health systems under strain despite previous activities in the framework of pandemic preparedness. They mostly related to the pre-existing shortages of staff in the health system entry points, especially in primary care [18], as well as shortages of staff in infectious disease management and critical care units (e.g., intensive care doctors and nurses as well as anaesthetists) [19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Consequently, health systems became overwhelmed quickly by big numbers of acute patients with severe respiratory problems [26,27].…”