Strengthening Academic Public Health Programs and Workforce Development Through Fieldwork: Insights From a Novel Partnership Between New Mexico’s Two Major Universities

Abstract

Our collaboration to strengthen applied practice in public health training between two public universities in New Mexico has offered us insight into the types of institutional, administrative, and programmatic support beneficial for navigating work with limited resources and varying geographic considerations. We share some lessons from this burgeoning partnership between University of New Mexico’s (UNM) College of Population Health and New Mexico State University’s (NMSU) Department of Public Health Sciences which began in 2022. The main areas of learning focus on exchanging resources to extend relationships with fieldwork sites and site supervisors, engage and support students in their planning and implementation of their fieldwork, and identify institutional resources to maintain and grow programmatic quality. Implications from this work include efforts to reinforce the public health workforce pipeline, especially to ensure the participation and success of students from underrepresented backgrounds.