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September 10, 2024

This summer, we awarded the Columbus Public Health Environmental Health Division in Columbus, Ohio the Joe Beck Educational Contribution Award.

As environmental health departments face the difficult hiring landscape, the job of staff recruitment, hiring, and retention must be more strategic.

Educational Program for Staff Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention

To address these issues, the Columbus Public Health team created a professional development program to train environmental health specialists in all areas of environmental health, allowing them to build skills and have more variety. The tenants of the program are:

• Develop learning partnerships with schools of higher education to create employment pathways.
• Enhance onboarding by creating an extensive cross-training and mentorship experience.
• Provide creative employee feedback opportunities.
• Provide an accelerated training program to improve staff confidence on the REHS/RS exam.

Cross-Training for Environmental Health Staff Advancement

Providing training across every environmental health program has allowed environmental health specialists to advance their knowledge, be more well-rounded, and feel more included. Since implementation of this inclusive cross-training strategy:

• Staff have passed the REHS/RS credential exam at a higher rate, subsequently helping them to advance through the pay scale.
• Credentialed staff have received additional training for more complex environmental health issues.
• The division has become better prepared for future success and growth.

Variety of Education Formats and Methods

The 12–18 month program is based on the need for both theoretical and practical application of environmental health and is focused on:

• Classroom style and self-paced online trainings
• Field training
• Program rotations for all environmental health disciplines

Measurable Success in Staff and Community Health

By having staff trained in all environmental health programs, the educational program allowed the organization to regionalize work areas, reduce travel time, and develop staff for backup roles to reduce burnout and equalize overtime hours.

• Staff now start their work day from home up to 3 days per week, increasing efficiency and flexibility. In 2023, this change led to completing pool inspections sooner, which lead to early detection of health hazards and 31 closures for immediate hazards.
• Having staff trained in lead investigation allowed the team to respond to lower action levels (5.0–3.5 μg/dl).
• Helped to reduce turnover in the division by 130% (from 24% in 2022 to 11% in 2023).
• Helped prepare staff to take the REHS/RS credential exam (paid for by the organization) with average passing rates at 88%.

-neha.org –

The Joe Beck Educational Contribution Award recognizes an individual or group for their educational contribution to the advancement and professional development of environmental health professionals.