Public health agencies face a serious workforce crisis: an aging workforce with no sign of backfill, continued employee attrition, and concurrent budget cuts with increasing mandates. These challenges act synergistically to impact the staff’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities. This CDC-funded video project, completed in 2014, aimed to preserve the institutional memory of, and forever capture, the universal pieces of wisdom of 10 current and former health department employees with over 250 years of combined experience.
These video-driven trainings include themes of cross-training, operations in crisis, the unexpected, and optimal communication. These public health pearls of wisdom are applicable to any health department and may offer a unique training tool to enable other health department staff to think and act creatively during a crisis, fiscal or emergent. Access the facilitators guide for more information on how to use this video series in your organization or agency.
Funded by: Cooperative Agreement 5U90TP000419-03 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jonathan has over fifteen years of experience in qualitative and quantitative research with significant emphasis on disaster field research and study design, implementation, management, and data architecture and analysis. He contributes to a broad multi-method disaster research portfolio, including natural hazards mapping, rural preparedness, mental health and psychosocial support, community coalition building, and child-focused community resilience. He also has significant experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their use in disaster preparedness and recovery, evaluating the unanticipated consequences of pandemic flu, determining racially and ethnically appropriate emergency messaging, and analyzing the long-term disaster resiliency and recovery issues of Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. He holds a master’s degree in public health from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, where he is currently pursuing a doctorate of public health in Leadership in Global Health and Humanitarian Systems.
