Field Placement: LA County Department of Public Health: Office of Organizational Development & Training
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Preceptor: Cherie Forsha
Student Name: Serene Ho
Year: 2008

My field study placement was with the Leadership and Technology Unit and the Emergency Preparedness Unit within the Office of Organizational Development and Training (ODT) of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. My preceptor was Cherie Forsha, RN, MSN/MPH, CNS, the current Assistant Nursing Director/Deputy of ODT. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the main function of ODT is to develop, plan, facilitate, and evaluate trainings for all employees of the Department of Public Health.  

ODT takes a more administrative approach in executing Public Health knowledge, as it is geared towards training employees of the County, rather than outreaching to the community. This office emphasizes on maintaining the well-being and knowledge of the County’s employees as quality assurance of the work they pass on to the communities employees outreach to.

For the duration of my field study, from July to September 2008, I had two main projects. I created a training module for the Leadership Unit called “Building a Positive Work Environment” for the New Supervisor Development Program ODT is launching. This training module was designed to be implemented by the Leadership Unit staff for a cohort of new supervisors across the Department of Public Health. In addition to the development of the module, I helped implement the program and assisted in the preliminary stages of the evaluation of the module. For the Emergency Preparedness Unit, I also assisted in the development of several training modules for Emergency Preparedness across the Department of Public Health. However, for these modules, I assisted more with the evaluation process of creating questionnaires, analyzing previous data to be compiled into reports, and other evaluation tools. 

In addition to developing my curriculum designing skills, formative research skills, and evaluation skills, my field study provided me the opportunity to experience many of the internal organizational dynamics within LA County Department of Public Health. I had the opportunity to visit various sites and listen to various presentations from different offices within LA County to gain a better viewpoint of how the Department of Public Health works.

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