Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Centers

Abstract

The importance of a competent and prepared national public health workforce, ready to respond to threats to the public's health, has been acknowledged in numerous publications since the 1980s. The Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Centers (PERLCs) were funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010 to continue to build upon a decade of focused activities in public health workforce preparedness development initiated under the Centers for Public Health Preparedness program (http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/cphp/). All 14 PERLCs were located within Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) accredited schools of public health. These centers aimed to improve workforce readiness and competence through the development, delivery, and evaluation of targeted learning programs designed to meet specific requirements of state, local, and tribal partners. The PERLCs supported organizational and community readiness locally, regionally, or nationally through the provision of technical consultation and dissemination of specific, practical tools aligned with national preparedness competency frameworks and public health preparedness capabilities. Public health agencies strive to address growing public needs and a continuous stream of current and emerging public health threats. The PERLC network represented a flexible, scalable, and experienced national learning system linking academia with practice. This system improved national health security by enhancing individual, organizational, and community performance through the application of public health science and learning technologies to frontline practice.

Emergency preparedness for public health threats, surveillance, modelling & forecasting

“…The measures for public health preparedness also focus on preparing the public health taskforce with well-defined roles and responsibilities by developing competent training resources, enhancing communications, establishing and sustaining response systems, and providing evaluation parameters for effectiveness and efficiency 106 . The global public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have initiated Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Centers (PERRCs) as well as Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Centers (PERLCs) across the United States to aid in developing such a public health workforce 106 . The deployment of such trained taskforce in the frontline of emergencies enhances capacity for a timely response to turn aside the global threat.…”

Enhancing Access to Quality Online Training to Strengthen Public Health Preparedness and Response

“…The PERLC grantees were expected to utilize the Core Competency Model in developing trainings. Between 2010 and 2015, the PERLCs developed a total of 1063 learning products delivered in a variety of formats, including online or distance-based, face-to-face, and informational briefs, exercises and drills, and tool kits 16…”

Public Health Student Response to COVID-19

“…GSERPs were initially formed in the early and mid 2000s at Schools of Public Health and supported with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the Centers for Public Health Preparedness and the Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center grants. The goal of these Centers was to improve the capacity of the U.S. public health workforce to prepare for and respond to terrorism and other emerging public health threats through competency-based workforce development [ 10 ]. GSERPs were one approach used by these Centers to meet this goal [ 6 ].…”