Grouping Public Health Skills to Facilitate Workforce Development: A Factor Analysis of PH WINS

Abstract

Objectives: This study examined whether distinct factors exist among public health skills, measured through the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS). Understanding how workforce training needs group is important for developing targeted and appropriate public health workforce training sessions. Design: Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine public health skills among tier 1 staff (nonmanagers) and a combined group of tier 2 and 3 staff (managers and executives). Setting: Data for this study come from the 2017 PH WINS, which assessed public health workforce perceptions of training needs, workplace environment, job satisfaction, perceptions about national trends, and demographics. The analysis included 22 items. Participants: All public health staff in participating agencies were eligible to complete the survey. The national data set included participants from 47 state health agencies, 26 large local health departments (LHDs), and 71 mid-sized LHDs across all 10 Health and Human Services regions in the United States (including LHDs from all states). The analytic sample was n = 9630 in tier 1, n = 4829 in tier 2, and n = 714 in tier 3 staff. Main Outcome Measure: Three factors were identified within the skills portion of PH WINS, using exploratory factor analysis. To interpret retained factors, the following parameters were used: factor loadings greater than 0.4, factor cross-loadings less than 0.4 or higher than loadings on other factors, and communalities greater than 0.5. Results: Factors included (1) data and systems thinking, (2) planning and management, and (3) community collaboration, with slight variation in item loadings between tier 1 and tier 2 and 3 staff analyses. Conclusion: This study was the first known factor analysis of the training needs and workforce skills portion of PH WINS in the published literature. This study advances our conceptualization of public health workforce skills and has the potential to shape future critical workforce training development.

Rural Public Health Data Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case for Building Better Systems Ahead of a Public Health Crisis

“…In a study using 2017 Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS) data representing only mid- and large-sized LHDs, “significant data and informatics skill gaps” were identified among the “broader public health workforce.”16 While few studies of public health data capacity specific to rural public agencies exist,1 one could presume that the 2017 PH WINS findings would have been more “significant” for rural agencies, had the 2017 PH WINS included small or rural agencies. Another study, conducting a factor analysis using 2017 PH WINS data, found “communication skills and data use skills loading onto the same factor,” suggesting that public health practice capacities regarding communication and data skills relate closely to one another 17. Our respondents similarly described a combined lack of capacity regarding understanding and communicating with data that hampered their efforts.…”

“…Another study, conducting a factor analysis using 2017 PH WINS data, found "communication skills and data use skills loading onto the same factor," suggesting that public health practice capacities regarding communication and data skills relate closely to one another. 17 Our respondents similarly described a combined lack of capacity regarding understanding and communicating with data that hampered their efforts.…”

The DASH model: Data for addressing social determinants of health in local health departments

“…We used an exploratory factor analysis approach to determine underlying latent structures present in public health workforce skills among three staff tiers: nonmanagers, managers and supervisors, and executive‐level staff (Petrovskis et al, 2022b). We aimed to better understand how various public health skills grouped together, including what skills grouped with data use skills.…”

“…From this preliminary model, we identified specific gaps and narrowed our final model to include only individual and organizational-level factors (Figure 2). We then conducted two quantitative analyses that were a factor analysis of public health skills and a multivariate linear regression analysis to empirically test elements of our proposed theoretical model and refine relationships in our final model (Petrovskis et al, 2022a(Petrovskis et al, , 2022b. Lastly, we incorporated evaluation findings from a training series for public health practitioners that was focused on data use and health disparities knowledge attainment to further support relationships between certain concepts in our model Table 1.…”

“…Data use skill and community collaboration skill were supported by our literature review and our exploratory factor analysis of public health workforce skills conducted in a separate study and described elsewhere (Petrovskis et al, 2022b). To examine latent structures underlying public health skills we used 2017 US data from PH WINS.…”