The crucial importance of accurate enumeration to bringing public health nurses out from behind the "Other" category.

Public health nursing is a unique field of nursing with specialized skills, roles, and functions designed to address disease prevention and health promotion of populations and to respond to emerging health crisis such the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the unique role and professional responsibilities of public health nurses, they are not identified as a distinct nursing specially by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics workforce data. This is problematic as accurate enumeration of public health nursing can supply the necessary data to identify gaps of these essential professionals. To effectively address this gap and have the capacity to identify public health nursing workforce needs, a method to define, describe, and enumerate the public health nursing workforce nationally with a unique split Standard Occupational Classification is necessary. Further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health and Data Authority must have the ability to coordinate data reporting on the public health workforce, support standardization, and streamline annual enumeration.