This past week, I had the chance to attend my first professional conference when I flew to Anaheim for the annual NACCHO360 conference, a gathering of county and city health department staff and public health professionals. Between all the excitement and nervousness that comes with going to your first conference: navigating flights and large convention halls, I also got the opportunity to learn firsthand from professionals who have already begun their careers through a mix of workshops, larger sessions, and exhibitions. In this post, I wanted to reflect a little on my time at National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the lessons I learned, not only from listening to sessions, but also from the people around me.

As I’ve been working to help support the Public Health Leadership and Education, Advancing Health Equity and Data Science (PH LEADS) program this summer, I’ve become familiar with a variety of reasons why recent public health graduates or professionals already in the workforce may be reluctant to either join or stay in public health. Though the reports I read online are still important in terms of providing context, crucially this conference gave me the chance to hear those reasons firsthand from local health department staff. Through the sessions I attended at NACCHO, I heard local health officials and their partners corroborate barriers the PH LEADS program has found, such as low compensation compared to other sectors, a perceived lack of opportunities for advancement, and a long hiring process.

At the same time, I was also introduced to new barriers I hadn’t yet heard about. The importance of flexibility and lack of opportunities for remote work stood out to me as a challenge mentioned consistently by attendees. One participant in a recruitment and retention workshop I attended on Wednesday mentioned how her health department had required its staff to work fully in-person even through the COVID-19 pandemic, with administration brushing aside staff interest in incorporating more remote work. Other participants spoke about how, despite having comparatively higher salaries than other health departments, their inability to offer flexibility and a work-life balance through remote work to prospective employees often discouraged them from joining. Although I hadn’t specifically heard about remote work as a major issue in public health before, it makes sense that in a world where working from home has become increasingly popular and has allowed employees to have better control over their work-life balance, remote work would become a major selling point when recruiting individuals to public health.

Beyond remote work, local health officials also brought up important points I hadn’t considered before, such as geography, “poaching” of positions between health departments and hospitals, and office safety. In our workshop on the systems approach to public health work, two attendees from Guam spoke about how, due to their remote location, they struggle with recruiting and retaining staff. Other attendees brought up how rural health departments can also struggle with geography, as prospective employees may not want to move out of a larger city that may have more resources to a smaller, local health department. In addition to geography, participants also spoke about the issue of other health departments, hospitals, or other sectors taking staff from health departments. Although this idea that other sectors may be able to offer better compensation than health departments has come up before for me, this was the first time that I heard about competition between health departments themselves. A third issue that especially stood out to me, likely because I hadn’t heard about it at all before the conference, was when a professor who interviewed public health workers on their experiences noted that office safety was another major concern. For instance, some respondents highlighted feeling that the buildings they worked in were structurally or physically unsafe. This concern likely also ties into the desire for increased remote work, as working from home offers I found all these insights to be particularly valuable, as they widened my understanding of public health’s challenges and gave me the chance to hear them from the professionals who are carrying out public health work on a daily basis.

Along with learning about issues within the workforce, I also had the privilege of hearing about real-world solutions that local health leaders are currently implementing to address public health challenges. Some officials at the recruitment and retention workshop spoke about how they’ve moved to hiring employees as contractors, which allows them to offer higher salaries while retaining benefits that staff would have had as traditional employees.

Along with learning about issues within the workforce, I also had the privilege of hearing about real-world solutions that local health leaders are currently implementing to address public health challenges. Some officials at the recruitment and retention workshop spoke about how they’ve moved to hiring employees as contractors, which allows them to offer higher salaries while retaining benefits that staff would have had as traditional employees. Others brought up possible solutions such as renting out the office space remote work frees up to help mitigate budgetary constraints. I saw how sharing these solutions seemed to have an encouraging effect on the attendees, some of whom said that they would consider implementing their colleagues’ ideas. Although focusing on and clarifying challenges is certainly important, it was heartening to see how public health professionals are looking beyond merely identifying issues to also pursue solutions. Critically, these workshops and sessions gave staff the chance to collaborate, share ideas with each other, and build inter-departmental relationships.

Beyond the smaller, individual workshops I attended, large-scale plenary sessions that I went to provided me the opportunity to look at public health as a field from a bird’s eye view. I appreciated their frank discussion of the challenges facing the field, most notably recent funding constraints. Insight from people such as Dr. Michael Osterholm on how the public health world can pursue vaccine policy amid a growing tide of vaccine hesitancy also emphasized to me how valuable conferences like these are in terms of addressing current issues and allowing professionals to share knowledge.

Though my time in Anaheim was relatively short, just spanning a few days, it was still enough to teach me about the importance of partnerships in public health and to see just what public health professionals are doing in this moment. From the point of view of a student not yet officially in the workforce, public health work can often feel obscured or invisible. Going to NACCHO360 gave me the chance to break beyond that veil. Even just walking through the convention center, it was clear how local health leaders are taking the initiative right now: posters highlighting important work local departments were doing lined the halls. Despite the numerous challenges facing the public health field, simply attending this conference and being able to witness the real-world work and collaboration taking place on a national scale was an encouraging experience.

BIO:

Isabella Zhou is rising senior currently studying Global Public Health and Data Science at the University of Virginia. This summer, she’s been interning with NNPHI in support of the PH LEADS program, which aims to develop data science and leadership capabilities within the public health workforce. While at school, Isabella is involved in programs such as the Peer Health Educators, a group of students that strives to communicate strategies for safer health behaviors to their peers. Outside of work and school, Isabella enjoys trying new recipes and spending time with her family and friends.