The local public health agency workforce: research needs and practice realities.

There is a paucity of information about the nation's local governmental public health agency (LPHA) workforce. Without additional research, crucial questions about the individuals providing front-line public health services remain unanswered. Current national efforts to develop a public health workforce research agenda must include strategies for collecting basic data on local governmental public health workers. The work of enumerating and classifying LPHA staff is complicated, but not impossible. Projects to improve LPHA performance and discussions of the certification of public health workers are incomplete without current and accurate data on the individuals comprising our nation's public health system. The need to describe basic facets of the LPHA workforce is not trivial. As city and county budgets are cut and LPHAs are left scrambling to cover lost positions, data are needed to inform important decisions about what kinds of LPHA staff are needed to keep a community healthy.