Advancing the Ecosystem for Youth Wellness: Training, Supporting, and Sustaining the Pediatric Public Health Workforce

Children and adolescents’ health outcomes depend not only on healthcare services, but also on the strength of the public health workforce involved in prevention and promotion, surveillance, policy, community engagement, and cross-sector collaboration. We consider the public health workforce broadly to include 1) professionals within health systems (pediatricians, nurses, allied health professionals), 2) professionals outside of health systems who support child health and wellbeing (school health staff, community health workers, social workers, health educators), and 3) policymakers, researchers, and systems roles that shape the ecosystem to support children and youth, as well as 4) trainees entering any of these pathways. Despite its critical importance, relatively limited attention has been paid to how the pediatric public health workforce is educated and trained, supported, diversified, and sustained across different global contexts and systems — a gap that sits squarely within the science of health education and workforce learning.

At the same time, the pediatric health landscape is rapidly evolving. There are various workforce challenges, including shortages, burnout, inequities in representation, fragmented training pathways, and insufficient integration across disciplines. Addressing these challenges requires a coordinated, interdisciplinary, and equity-centered approach to education, training, and continuing professional development across public health sectors, including health services psychology, medicine, allied health professions, and community-based systems.

This Research Topic aims to advance the science and practice of pediatric public health workforce education by bringing together innovative, interdisciplinary, and globally diverse contributions on how the workforce is taught, trained, mentored, and evaluated. We seek to highlight teaching and training strategies that strengthen workforce capacity, promote equity and inclusion in who can access and progress through training, support well-being through better-designed learning and supervision models, and enhance educational collaboration across sectors influencing child and adolescent health outcomes. Contributions should make clear how the educational or training approach under study connects to child and adolescent health delivery and outcomes.


Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
o Training pathways and competency development for the pediatric public health workforce (see above broad definition of pediatric public health workforce).
o Innovative teaching and learning approaches, including digital learning, data tools, and new educational models, for workforce development
o New approaches to evaluating pediatric public health workforce education and training programs
o Mentorship, supervision, and career development across training and career stages
o Community-based, practice-oriented, and field-based training models
o Interdisciplinary collaboration and team science in training across public health, pediatrics, schools, social services, and community organizations
o Educational and training strategies to address workforce shortages, recruitment, retention, and leadership development in child and adolescent public health
o Training-related approaches to workforce burnout and secondary trauma across public health settings
o Global disparities in training access and institutional support for workforce education
o Equity, representation, and inclusion in access to pediatric public health training and leadership development
o Policy and institutional strategies to strengthen pediatric public health workforce education and capacity
We welcome original research (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods); scoping, systematic, and meta-analytic reviews; brief research reports, and perspectives; commentaries; and editorials.