COVID Connect

 

Help available for local health departments responding to COVID, expanding workforce and essential public health services

 

The Ohio State University College of Public Health is prepared to collaborate with any/all of Ohio’s 113 local health departments to support additional workforce capacity, in alignment with the CDC Crisis Response Cooperative Agreement, the Buckeye Public Health Corps (BPHC), including graduate students and recent graduates from across Ohio State’s various colleges and campuses, could contribute to both a rapid response to SARS CoV2 as well as expanding public health capacity to provide essential public health services. The BPHC program is able to hire, train, and deploy skilled graduate students and recent graduates, both within local jurisdictions and virtually to meet the needs identified by local health departments.  These partnerships will have the additional benefit of reinforcing the graduation-to-workforce pipeline.

 

Buckeye Public Health Corps graduate student fellows and recent graduates will meet all of the essential criteria to support locals with:

  • professional/clinical roles
  • disease investigation staff
  • program staff
  • administrative staff

Additionally, the College of Public health currently provides several workforce development trainings and can also conduct customized trainings to meet the needs of respective local health departments.

Please contact Jennifer Beard at Beard.140@OSU.edu to discuss the possibility of workforce expansion through BPHC and/or trainings.

 

Relevant currently available  training opportunities include:

Center for HOPES Evaluation Certificates:

Beginner ($250, available immediately): Introduction to public health and social services evaluation; evaluation design from implementation to impact studies; implementing evaluation and gathering credible evidence.

Intermediate ($300, available February 2022): Quantitative data collection for monitoring and evaluation; qualitative data collection for monitoring and evaluation; operational frameworks for evaluating data

Advanced ($400, available April 2022): Continous quality improvement, cost analysis and cost-effectiveness, evaluation for health equity

Related Summer Program in Population Health Offerings:

Data for Action: Examples from Pandemics, Epidemics, and Other Public Health Crises, Ayaz Hyder, PhD

  • 14-hour course
  • Optional live Zoom sessions available with instructor
  • Course Description: Currently there is no shortage of public health crises. Data-informed decision-making during times of crises is critical for public health departments, health care systems and payers. In this course, two examples—the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic—will serve as case studies on collecting, processing, integrating, and using data for action. Additional case studies may include infant mortality and food insecurity. By the end of the course, participants will be able to develop a dynamic and sustainable data-for-action strategy, to assemble and analyze data for action, and to translate data for actions that are impactful and equitable. The method of instruction will involve short lectures on data for action frameworks, guest lectures from local public health professionals and other stakeholders implementing data for action initiatives in Ohio, and hands-on training with software and other tools to catalyze data for action, such as use cases for community engagement, open data platforms and data commons, and data visualization/analytics