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This analysis summarizes responses from the 2021 Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey to gain insight into governmental public health workers’ needs and experiences. Public health workers continue to be on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic and recruiting and retaining workers is an important element of an effective emergency response. Pride in public health and teamwork were identified as positive aspects of the job, while burnout and unappreciation were cited as negative aspects.

Challenges related to workforce capacity have existed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. These shortages are especially acute and problematic for settings with high disease burdens such as nursing facilities. Strategies for expanding public health capacity within nursing homes and more broadly include increased training and retention of experienced staff.

Mask mandates in states beginning in 2020 had a significant impact on COVID-19-related hospitalizations. This study recommends revisiting mask mandates as new variants of COVID-19 spread and pressures return to the healthcare system.

This article identifies levels of vaccine hesitancy and acceptance among people experiencing homelessness. It gives public health practitioners information on ways to address the relatively higher levels of hesitancy among this population and encourages logistical barriers such as transportation to be addressed as part of a larger strategy.

This analysis evaluates the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 transmission across states. Non-pharmaceutical interventions evaluated include the reopening of restaurants and bars, wearing facial masks in public, and lockdowns.

This analysis provides a framework for navigating the ethnical concerns around the lifting of public health and social measures for people who are vaccinated against COVID-19. It warns against the unintended consequences of vaccination certificates in creating more division within communities.

This study assesses the usefulness in death data from a medical examiner’s office in strategic planning during a pandemic. There was found to be a statistically significant correlation between daily reported death numbers from a medical examiner’s office and hospital admissions. As such, death data from a medical examiner’s office can be assumed to be a reliable source and used when developing strategic plans.

This analysis identifies risk factors and socio-economic impacts of long COVID with a public health lens. It notes that more analysis is needed, but encourages the impacts of long COVID to be seen within a larger social, and not just medical, context. Workplace and family structure implications are substantial. Long COVID should be tracked as distinct condition using person-centered research techniques that include traditionally underrepresented populations such as children.

This research paper discusses various public health agency websites and official government websites in countries with more than 5,000 confirmed COVID cases. The researchers used various methods to determine the readability level of the websites. The researchers found that official COVID information put out by states often exceeded the recommended reading level, while federal information was found to be much more readable, most likely due to federal mandates for readability. Recommendations are to use plain-language COVID resources to be more accessible to all audiences.

Public health funding is traditionally siloed and program-specific. To improve social determinants of health, which cut across multiple sectors, states have moved toward braided and layered funding models. Engaged leadership, shared purpose and vision, formalized collaborative decision-making processes, and administrative procedures necessary to do this work are described in this article.