Perspectives on public health workforce research.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Office of Workforce and Career Development is committed to developing a competent, sustainable, and diverse public health workforce through evidence-based training, career and leadership development, and strategic workforce planning to improve population health outcomes. This article reviews the previous efforts in identifying priorities of public health workforce research, which are summarized as eight major research themes. We outline a strategic framework for public health workforce research that includes six functional areas (ie, definition and standards, data, methodology, evaluation, policy, and dissemination and translation). To conceptualize and prioritize development of an actionable public health research agenda, we constructed a matrix of key challenges in workforce analysis by public health workforce categories. Extensive reviews were conducted to identify valuable methods, models, and approaches to public health workforce research. We explore new tools and approaches for addressing priority areas for public health workforce and career development research and assess how tools from multiple disciplines of social sciences can guide the development of a research framework for advancing public health workforce research and policy.