The governmental public health workforce is at the heart of the U.S. public health system, but it’s drastically understaffed. Due to a range of factors—including COVID-19-related burnout, decades of underfunding, retirements, and lower pay than private sector work—the U.S. public health workforce was down an estimated 80,000 positions nationwide prior to COVID-19.

One effort to address this staffing crisis is the Minnesota Public Health Corps (MNPHC), a program that places AmeriCorps members in local public health agencies across Minnesota. The MNPHC program is a collaboration between ServeMinnesota (Minnesota’s AmeriCorps State Service Commission); Ampact (the nonprofit organization implementing the program); and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (which supports MNPHC with content expertise, training, and evaluation). Established as part of the national Public Health AmeriCorps initiative in 2022, MNPHC aims to address acute staffing shortages in governmental public health, develop a new generation of public health professionals, and extend public health services into underrepresented communities. The MNPHC program is unique among public health AmeriCorps programs because it predominantly focuses on governmental public health services.

A research study from the School of Public Health evaluated the first year of MNPHC’s implementation, from 2022-2023, and focused on two key areas of impact: the capacity of local public health host sites to deliver services, and how participation in the program affected MNPHC members’ career development in public health. During the one-year study period, 63 MNPHC members logged almost 74,000 hours on a variety of projects at public health host sites across Minnesota.

In order to assess MNPHC’s effectiveness, researchers surveyed AmeriCorps members before and after their service term, as well as the supervisors at the local public health host sites.

The analysis, published in Health Affairs, found:

• MNPHC members were younger and more diverse than the current Minnesota governmental public health workforce. MNPHC participants were younger (61% between 18-24), and more diverse (36% non-white) than Minnesota’s existing public health workforce, which is predominantly older (1% aged 18-24) and less diverse (14% non-white).
• Increased capacity and significant improvements in host sites’ ability to provide public health services. Corps members helped host site agencies expand their reach and efficiency, and supervisors noted that corps members played a crucial role in reaching new communities and increasing service delivery.
• Local impact and professional growth among participants. The vast majority of participants—79%—said they planned to pursue a career in public health, while 82% felt they had a positive impact in their community, and 82% also said they successfully advanced public health initiatives in their communities.

“The Minnesota Public Health Corps was designed to address two significant challenges— the immediate need for increased capacity in our public health agencies and the longer-term goal of developing a more robust and diverse public health workforce,” said SPH researcher and lead author Chelsey Kirkland. “Our findings underscore MNPHC’s impact in meeting the service needs of local public health agencies, while also fostering a new generation of public health professionals who reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. Scaled appropriately, this program could serve as a model for revitalizing the public health workforce across the U.S.”

The article appears in a special edition of Health Affairs called Reimagining Public Health that is focused on leading-edge ideas in the field.