WVU School of Public Health named HRSA training site to serve West Virginia

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University School of Public Health has been named a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) training site in an effort to improve the nation’s public health system.

HRSA awarded nearly $3.4 million over the next four years to the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to create the Region 3 Public Health Training Center (PHTC) to serve Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. It will also serve as the health informatics training center for the entire country.

The WVU School of Public Health training site, which is one of six sites sharing in the award, will extend the Region 3 Center’s charge to provide free training sessions to the state’s public health professionals on a variety of topics, ranging from behavioral health programming for smoking cessation to computer programs that track an infectious disease spread and simulate interventions to stop it.

Lauri Andress, Ph.D., J.D., WVU School of Public Health assistant dean for public health practice and workforce development, will oversee WVU’s role as a training site.

“The WVU School of Public Health is excited to be a local performance site and work with all of the partners in the Region 3 PHTC,” Dr. Andress said. “Our Office of Public Health Practice and Workforce Development will leverage resources across the School to provide training and education to frontline public health workers in communities across West Virginia.”

In the new regionalization of the HRSA training centers, Pitt Public Health will oversee local training sites run by Drexel University School of Public Health, which will serve eastern Pennsylvania; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which will serve Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia; the Virginia Department of Health, which will serve Virginia; and the WVU site.