Can the health-care system meet the challenge of pandemic flu? Planning, ethical, and workforce considerations.

The federal pandemic influenza plan predicts that 30% of the population could be infected. The impact of this pandemic would quickly overwhelm the public health and health-care delivery systems in the U.S.

Public health workforce enumeration: beware the "quick fix".

The most common source of information on workforce in the United States is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a branch of the Department of Labor. In 1998, 14 public health workforce titles were added to the BLS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. While this was a constructive step, it is not a "quick fix," because these additional titles do not solve the longstanding problems inherent in capturing accurate PH workforce data.

The public health workforce in the year 2000.

It has been 20 years since the last estimate of the public health workforce's size and composition. This study provides a best estimate through secondary analysis of existing workforce reports, summaries, and information gathered from chief health officials in 50 states and 6 territories, public health organizations, and federal agencies. Results indicate that the workforce consists of some 448,254 persons in salaried positions as follows: 44.