Title V plays an important role in allowing the Florida Department of Health (Department) to maintain capacity within the Title V workforce. Title V funding helps ensure the Department maintains an adequate workforce in the State Health Office to preserve, enhance, and expand services for the Title V population.

The Department encourages Maternal and Child Health (MCH) program staff to complete the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs MCH Leadership Competencies module. Participants in the training learn how to identify core MCH leadership competencies, outline the knowledge and skill areas required of MCH leaders, provide a conceptual framework for the development of an MCH leader, and describe how MCH leadership competencies might be used by a variety of audiences.

The State of Florida Library provides state employees with a library account. Through this service, MCH and Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) staff can access hundreds of databases and can request journal articles and other materials, most at no charge.

The Department’s Public Health Research Section offers the Research Excellence Initiative, a year-long educational program that provides structured education and mentoring to Department professionals interested in conducting research, epidemiology, and program evaluation. This initiative was developed to promote high quality, innovative research and develop experienced researchers who can promote excellence by serving as role models and mentors, foster collaborations, and promote research on Department priorities.

Additionally, the Department partners with the University of South Florida (USF), College of Public Health to engage potential and current early-to-mid-career supervisors and managers who demonstrate leadership potential for USF’s Public Health Executive Leadership Program. This program is a leadership development initiative intended to equip future leaders in the Department with knowledge and skills necessary to lead in today’s challenging health care and public health environment. This is a seven-month program in Public Health Executive Leadership for 20 CHD staff, and 10 State Health Office staff. The Department also offers ongoing trainings to staff that include contract management, safety, security, supervisor, and the Health Insurance and Accountability Act.  

Children’s Medical Services (CMS) promotes, sponsors, and develops evidenced-based trainings that focuses on public health core competencies, opportunities and standards for public health including those specific to CYSHCN. Workforce training provides continued learning, skill development and growth in the achievement of desired outcomes. Examples of sponsored workshops include health equity and adaptive leadership. As a result of the Public Health Executive Leadership program, the Title V CYSHCN director and fellow CMS staff identified the need for succession planning, with a large percent of leadership retiring in the next five years. With research pointing to the need for formal mentoring programs to help bolster public health leadership competencies, a needs assessment was conducted, a business case developed, and a small pilot program was implemented. Best-practice guidelines for mentoring programs and identified leadership skills training content from MCH navigator and Region IV Public Health Training Center were utilized in the development of the program. The inaugural cohort represented a diverse workforce with a spectrum of collective public health experience that span decades. This workforce development program yielded outcomes such as 100 percent participant satisfaction with the program. Additionally, 70 percent of participants found the program a complete success in meeting their individual professional development goals while 100 percent of participants (mentors and mentees) reported the program’s facilitators, materials, and tools beneficial to their professional development plan. Furthermore, 90 percent of participants rated their experience in the mentorship program as high quality (reported as at least “good” or “excellent”). Essential program feedback from this cohort was received at the end of the experience and included suggestions to include more content on workplace culture and Change Management theory, as these topics garnered focal attention from participants. Lastly, opportunities also exist in the mentor/mentee matching process. One suggestion was to allow multiple mentor/mentee relationships to coexist throughout the experience, in efforts to ensure various mentor skillsets were available to mentees and to enrich overall participant experiences with exposure to varied personalities, backgrounds, and experiences. Building off lessons learned, next steps include continuing with a second cohort while looking for resources that would support sustainability. 

CMS collaborates with the University of Florida’s Pediatric Pulmonary Center and their family leader to provide statewide training to support and increase the skills of family leaders across organizations through the Florida Family Leader Network (FFLN). The theme of the 2022 fifth annual FFLN Summit was ‘Leveraging Literacy Tools’. Sessions included the language of inclusion, facing challenges and finding the way forward, visual thinking, and where to go from here. A focus of the FFLN is on families and youth sharing their advocacy journeys, and perspectives throughout the sessions and skills building activities. The Summit was hybrid this year, to meet the needs of families that wanted in person and virtual options, which continued to provide opportunity for increased attendance and of attendees from across the country and U.S. territories. In 2022, the FFLN director, two FFLN Executive Committee members and statewide family leader presented at national and state conferences about this collaborative partnership. Per the annual survey feedback after each yearly summit, the FFLN continues to receive high rates of positive impact regarding personal growth of its members. The theme of 2023 sixth annual FFLN Summit is ‘A Family Leader’s Worth’ and is scheduled for September 20-22, 2023. This summit will revert to an in-person event which will allow for purposeful networking.

It should be noted that in the event of an emergency, unless granted a temporary exemption from emergency duty, all Department employees may be required to work before, during and/or beyond their normal hours or days in a special needs shelter, Red Cross shelter, Emergency Operations Command Center; or perform other emergency duties, including but not limited to response to or threats involving any disaster or threat of disaster, man-made or natural.