Workforce development

Global health security (GHS) and resilience involve the ability to prevent, detect, and respond to health threats caused by naturally occurring, accidental, or human-engineered hazards that can be environmental, technological, biological, chemical, nuclear, or previously unknown in nature. The COVID-19 pandemic realerted the world to current vulnerabilities in GHS from the local to the international levels. Disparities in human and other resources across low- and high-resource nations had differential consequences whereby the burden and effects of the disease were borne by some more than others. Once again, the world was reminded that GHS requires a trained workforce at every level equipped to make optimal decisions and to respond rapidly and effectively both during normal operations and in the face of an emergency. In addition, the pandemic reaffirmed that transdisciplinary and cross-agency collaboration is key to operationalizing effective strategies to develop the infrastructure and capacity to protect the health of people, animals, and the environment. A paradigm shift in workforce development is needed that measurably breaks down disciplinary silos, embraces innovations in technology, builds on lessons learned from past events, and takes an all-hazard approach to preparedness. A framework for protecting worker health and well-being is needed for worker retention and recruitment. Preparing tomorrow's workforce will require new modalities of learning to prepare well-trained, skilled, and motivated workers with the competencies to confront complex challenges and engage in multisectoral collaborations. While short-term solutions may meet immediate crises, long-term planning, and system-level changes are required to have the capacity and infrastructure needed to modernize GHS to meet the world's demand.