The Public Health Workforce Landscape The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted critical needs for a well-trained and robust public health workforce. Prior to the pandemic, the public health workforce was already challenged by a lack of formal public health training, employee turnover, funding inadequacies, and increasingly complex issues affecting public health practice and requiring multisector approaches.1–6 These trends, especially those regarding the workforce, were magnified by the pandemic. An October 2021 New York Times report described more than 500 top public health officials having left their jobs in the previous 19 months7 and more than half of public health workers surveyed in a 2021 study described stress-related symptoms of adverse mental health conditions.8 Because of the pandemic, states have seen an influx of funding for hiring staff and temporary workers to assist with specific tasks such as contact tracing9; yet, it is estimated that state and local health departments need to hire an additional 80 000 full-time equivalent positions to provide ongoing, foundational public health services.10 As such, it has never been more important to address critical public health workforce development needs. Recent public health workforce development initiatives have focused on core competencies11 and crosscutting strategic skills12,13 needed by the workforce to address complex multisector challenges faced by today's workforce. Additional initiatives have sought to understand challenges impacting the infrastructure of the US public health system6; establish a framework of priorities and strategies to strengthen public health workforce development14; and develop a common agenda to ensure that the public health workforce has the skills, resources, and support to address today's challenges.15 Embedded in these workforce initiatives is leadership and/or representation from among the nation's Regional Public Health Training Centers (RPHTCs) funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The Pivotal Role of Regional Public Health Training Centers The RPHTCs were established by HRSA in 1999 to respond to the need for quality training and tribal, local, and state public health workforce competency development to support the growing public health accreditation movement.16 Along with undergoing occasional grant-related “redesign” by HRSA over the decades,16 the RPHTCs remain a well-established resource providing professional development for the current public health workforce, experiential learning opportunities for the future workforce, and consulting and technical assistance for health departments and other public health organizations. Today's 10 RPHTCs serve all US states and territories through each of the 10 US Health and Human Services regions (see Supplemental Digital Content Figure, available at https://links.lww.com/JPHMP/A933). Each is housed in a school of public health and together they are the nation's most comprehensive source of public health training and support. As a regionally focused resource, they each are expected to know their regions well, while also working across regions to promote best practices, share and disseminate resources, prevent duplication, and collaborate around the development of public health workforce innovations. Their work together and across regions has also been supported by the National Coordinating Center for Public Health Training (NCCPHT) embedded at the National Network of Public Health Institutes. Regional Public Health Training Centers as a National Network Across its national network, RPHTCs have long worked collectively to advance public health workforce development. In 2015, the RPHTCs strengthened this collective approach and, in collaboration with the NCCPHT, began a systematic process to establish a coordinated “vision and approach to public health workforce development” as a collaborative of centers with deep public health training expertise and connections to practice. Through a national process of literature review and qualitative data collection among a wide-ranging group of diverse organizational and individual perspectives, significant challenges in ensuring coordinated, thoughtful workforce development strategies were identified and opportunities to further collective capacity-building across the centers and among national public health workforce organizations were recommended.17 The recommendations that resulted from this work have led to the development of a conceptual learning framework and a Toolkit for Building an Adaptive Public Health Workforce, designed to assist public health organizations and their partners in making systemic changes.18 In another example of the RPHTCs' collective approach to leveraging the expertise and responsiveness of these centers is the network's current work to develop competencies for racial justice in collaboration with the NCCPHT.19 These competencies will help guide public health practitioners, and those providing professional development opportunities, to identify and respond to training gaps toward more effectively addressing the complex issues of systemic racism that are the bedrock of health disparities and increasingly recognized as a public health crisis.20 Regional Public Health Training Centers as Resources Within Their Regions While engaged as a collective national network, the RPHTCs are also uniquely positioned to address workforce development needs in their own multistate regions. Individual PHTCs are familiar with the training needs, public health issues, learning preferences, existing resources, culture, and system-level idiosyncrasies of public health practice within the states and territories they serve. In part, the unique regional knowledge and responsiveness held by RPHTCs relate to public health training needs assessments regularly conducted by each RPHTC through mixed-methods approaches, depending on specific issues in that region or the nature of current events.21 As a result, each RPHTC is established and prepared to effectively respond to the unique training, consultation, assessment, or learning needs of the public health systems and agencies it serves. Every RPHTC has numerous examples of responsiveness to specific workforce development needs or requests. We highlight a few here. In 2020, Region 2 PHTC (based at Columbia University) partnered with the New York State Association of County Health Officials to conduct an in-progress review of New York State's local health departments' preparedness for and response to COVID-19.22 In an effort to address leadership training in the southeastern part of the United States, Region 4 PHTC (based at Emory University) offers an 8-month Public Health Leadership Institute (PHLI) to advance adaptive and strategic leadership skills. Using a cohort model, PHLI fellows represent each of the 8 states plus tribal health departments and agencies in their region.23 Region 5 PHTC (based at the University of Michigan) and Northwest Center for Public Health Practice in Region 10 (the PHTC based at the University of Washington) are collaborating with the de Beaumont Foundation regarding the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS) to collect data from all local health departments in their regions. This effort will serve to both deliver particularly in-depth information about their regions' workforce needs and provide the first ever rural data collected through the national PH WINS data collection efforts. The Midwestern PHTC in Region 7 (based at the University of Iowa) has developed a 10-part podcast series called Tackling Equity, which addresses multiple facets of health equity including suggestions of how health equity can be advanced in organizations and communities. These examples are not intended to be a comprehensive list but illustrate the breadth of work in which the RPHTCs are engaged. In addition, all RPHTCs have a robust field placement program, connecting public health students within their regions to experiential learning opportunities with medically underserved populations and communities. The Collective Outputs and Impact of Regional Public Health Training Centers Although each RPHTC has its own robust evaluation plan, collectively the RPHTCs gather data for 4 common metrics regarding training activities and 4 common metrics of outputs regarding their field placements. From July 2018 to June 2021, the RPHTCs collectively provided 7846 trainings, with 17 228 hours of instruction to public health practitioners, and reached 751 888 participants. Overall, training participants felt that the training information had been presented clearly, that the training improved their understanding of the subject matter offered, that they were satisfied with the learning received, and that the training was applicable to their work (Table). TABLE - Training and Field Placement Common Metrics, July 2018-July 2021 Training Common Metricsa % Who Agreed No. of Trainings Information was presented clearly 91 3461 Subject matter understanding improved 89 3461 Overall satisfaction 89 3461 Identified actions to apply information 86 3461 Field Placement Common Metrics b % Who Agreed No. of Field Placements Information learned was relevant to future career 96 641 Learning objectives were met 95 642 Increased interest in working with vulnerable populations 94 641 (Preceptor) Students' learning objectives were met 96 386 aFrom July 2018 to July 2021, 7846 trainings were provided to 751 888 participants, providing 17 228 hours of instruction. Common metrics data are available for 3461 of these trainings.bFrom July 2018 to July 2021, 693 students were placed in experiential learning settings where they obtained 145 719 hours of experience. Common metrics were not available for all placements. From 2018 to 2021, the RPHTCs placed 693 students in experiential learning settings where they obtained 145 719 hours of experience in a public health practice setting and contributed to public health system efforts. These students represent all levels of education (ie, undergraduate, master's, doctoral) and agencies across multiple sectors (eg, local and state health departments, community-based organizations, hospitals, academia). The Table illustrates that the majority of these field placement students felt that what they learned was relevant to their future career, agreed that they met their learning objectives, and that they had an increased interest in working with vulnerable populations as a result of their placement. In addition, the majority of preceptors indicated that their students met their learning objectives. Such field placements, as well as practice-based training needs assessments that help inform coursework and academic curricula, also lend themselves to efforts of schools of public health to remain relevant and connected to meeting the needs of the public health practice community. Conclusion The RPHTCs have a long history of assessing and responding to the varied and ever-changing workforce needs of their individual regions, while collaborating across their national network to promote best practices, share and disseminate resources, and collectively advance the field of public health workforce development. As such, these vital resources are even more essential to advancing the tremendous workforce development needs of their regions and the nation than they have ever been.