We are driving forward development of the public health workforce in the West Midlands to ensure we have the skills and capacity to most effectively meet the public health needs of our population.  Current streams of work include:

• Public health workforce training and development initiatives to support the Quality and Productivity agenda, particularly around reducing harm from Tobacco and Alcohol, linking with the Teaching Public Health Network and Communities for Health Network and implications regarding Transforming Community Services

• Driving forward the workforce element of the Staying Healthy Clinical pathway work focusing at present on the following:

  • mapping public health education and training provision against the Public Health Skills & Career Framework, identifying gaps in provision that will inform future commissioning, and moving towards joint credentialing of West Midlands HEI public health courses;

  • development of a training package to ensure our diverse public health workforce are skilled to deliver NHS Health Checks on an industrial scale

• Identifying and supporting public health talent through scoping the skills and competencies of our diverse public health workforce utilising the Public Health Skills and Career Framework (PHSCF)

• Development of the public health workforce with our partners in the Government Office West Midlands and the Teaching Public Health Network

• Preparing to take forward the outcome of the Department of Health’s review of public health regulation (currently in progress), through coordination of strategic initiatives to support public health practitioners in the registration process. This will include building on the current Staying Healthy Clinical Pathway workstream on joint credentialling