Goals and Guiding Principles
As part of CDC Moving Forward, we're forming a new National Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce. Stay tuned to this website for updates.
The Division of Workforce Development (DWD) strategic framework outlines our approach to strengthening the public health workforce. We use this framework to plan, implement, and evaluate our programs and activities. The framework also informs our logic model, which helps us track progress towards our mission.
Vision: A public health workforce prepared to meet emerging and future challenges
Mission: Improve health outcomes through diverse, flexible, and highly trained public health workforce
Goal 1: Quality Learning
Strengthen education, training, and professional development of the public health workforce
- Current Workforce — Strengthen the skills of the current workforce through quality, accredited, competency-based training
- Fellowship Programs — Build the public health workforce through experiential fellowship programs
- Future Workforce — Promote public health as a career choice through programs for students and teachers
Goal 2: Valuable Service
Enhance service, response, and consultation
- Improve public health impact through fellows’ on-the-job service
- Serve the needs of CDC programs, state and local health departments, and other partners through fellows’ assignments
- Respond to urgent domestic and international public health needs through short- term technical assistance
- Enhance consultation services for fellowships, learning resources, and other workforce development activities
Goal 3: National Leadership
Provide leadership in national public health workforce efforts
- Facilitate the use of standards for public health training and career pathways
- Characterize the workforce and assess needs before setting priorities
- Facilitate national collaborations with partners to address workforce priorities
Goal 4: Organizational Capacity
Maximize DWD’s potential for achieving impact
- Ensure alignment of staff and resources with priorities
- Strengthen leadership, management, and operations
- Support professional development for DWD staff
- Enhance communication to expand reach, visibility, and impact
Guiding Principles for DWD’s Work
In everything we do—from supporting initiatives across CDC, to our workforce development efforts for the broader public health community—we strive to:
- Keeping an eye to the future in a changing public health environment
- Shifting the balance toward a population health approach to workforce development
- Expanding innovative models for fellowships and other training programs
- Leveraging technology to improve efficiencies and impact
- Applying evidence-based approaches, from science to practice
- Enhancing collaboration and partnerships
- Evaluating to measure impact, ensure cost-effectiveness, and improve quality
- Valuing diversity in our staff and fellows
- Being customer-focused
- Serving as effective stewards of public resources