Fostering workforce capacity to maximize opportunities for the digital transformation of public health in Canada

COVID19 has shown us that the people working in public health need the skills to build digital tools like apps and websites and see if they work as they are supposed to. It is also important to make sure that these tools don't leave anyone behind and reach the people they are supposed to. While this is an important topic, we don't have a good idea of what skills people need or how they can be taught. We also don't have a good sense of how best to work with partners outside of the health system such as the businesses who are good at building these tools. In our study we hope to figure out the skills, training, and partners needed for people working in public health. To do this, we will study published suggestions and public health training programs made by experts around the world. We will use this information to know how far Canadian public health training programs are from the ideal. Then, we will discuss with Canadian public health trainers and experts to know how the gaps in our Canadian training programs can be filled and what partners will be needed to do so. We will use all this information to propose new skills, training and partners that can be included in our current training programs.