SPH Workforce Development Curricula Receive National Recognition

September 8, 2025 - The School of Public Health (SPH) is pleased to announce that several public health online courses developed for the Tennessee TRAINLearning Management System have been incorporated into “Enhancing Public Health Strategic Skills: A Guide to High Quality Trainings”, created and made available by Cornell University and the CDC. As noted by Matthew Coleman, MPH, of the Tennessee Department of Health, "the guide delivers a repository of online training courses directly to the workforce" to help them locate "high quality skills training. Each of the courses in this guide have been through rigorous quality testing and will help public health professionals develop the key strategic skills they need to continue to perform high level work and help their local communities." 

The following five courses from the University of Memphis SPH are contained in the national guide: 

• "Emergency Preparedness Communications", developed by Dr. Marian Levy 
• "Foundations of Data Visualizations", developed by Dr. Meghan Taylor 
• "Navigating Data: Avoiding Common Statistical Pitfalls in Public Health Analysis", developed by Dr. Xichen Mou 
• "Systems Thinking and Systems Science Methods for Public Health", developed by Dr. Yong Yang 
• "Making Evaluation Work for You: The Art and Science of Outcome-Based Evaluation", developed by Dr. Debra Bartelli 

The School of Public Health is grateful to the Tennessee Department of Health for providing funding for the course development. To date, our SPH faculty have developed 30 online courses for Tennessee TRAIN Learning Management System.  Dr. Marian Levy is the Principal Investigator of this grant effort.  Dr. Carrie Brooks, the Instructional Designer for this curriculum effort, provides invaluable expertise in the development of the online courses.