Lessons learned for public health workforce development: An evaluation of the centers for disease control and prevention’s laboratory leadership service fellowship

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the Laboratory Leadership Service (LLS) Fellowship Program in July 2015 to develop public health laboratory (PHL) leaders who will improve PHL quality and safety. This article describes a retrospective, summative evaluation to determine the extent to which LLS has met its short-term goals for PHL workforce development. The evaluation relied on existing data from routine LLS data collection and reporting, supplemented with a new alumni survey. The purpose of the design was threefold: 1) to reduce data collection burden on program staff and participants, 2) to assess the value and limits of routine fellowship data for comprehensive public health workforce development program evaluation, and 3) to identify ways to improve LLS’s routine data collections for program evaluation. We used descriptive statistics, qualitative analysis, and participatory methods (i.e., a data party) to analyze and interpret data. Results show LLS short-term outcome achievement and highlight opportunities for program improvement, particularly related to the design of certain training requirements and for future evaluations. Overall, the evaluation contributes to lessons learned for PHL workforce development efforts, including how routine data collections can contribute to comprehensive public health workforce development evaluations.