Amazon Web Services presents cloud training pathways for public health professionals

by Dr. Dawn Heisey-Grove, Pramod Halapeti, and Venkata Kampana | on

Today, Amazon Web Services (Amazon Web Services) announced Training Pathways for Public Health. These pathways are designed for public health professionals to learn more about the cloud and the Amazon Web Services services that can help them on their modernization journey. Digital and cloud skills are in high demand in the public health community. To meet this need, public health agencies can upskill staff and develop a new generation of public health professionals who are equipped to work in a modern data architecture.

These training pathways include several mechanisms for public health professionals to learn more about the cloud, modern data architectures, and Amazon Web Services services. These mechanisms provide public health staff with a variety of learning modalities, including on-demand online trainings, hands-on demonstrations, and multi-day customized trainings for public health teams.

For public health leaders who want to understand what the cloud can do for them, today

Public health professionals are busy. They need training that helps them understand the key concepts of a modern data architecture so they can make more informed decisions with their finite technological resources and help their staff innovate without breaking the budget. To meet this need, Amazon Web Services created the ‘ Art of Now for Public Health ’ training pathway. This pathway includes quick videos explaining key cloud concepts, demos, and fireside-chat discussions of modern data architecture and analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) resources. It presents information that can help you become familiar with relevant hot topics in cloud computing and Amazon Web Services services. It also includes real-world examples of how public health agencies have employed these solutions in their environments.

On-demand training pathways for three specific public health personas

Amazon Web Services already provides training designed for information technology (IT) staff with more than 600 training modules online and many options for in-person and virtual synchronous workshops. Although public health professionals work closely with data every day, they do not need to have the same level of detailed training as IT professionals. Training Pathways for Public Health identifies the cloud concepts and Amazon Web Services services needed by three public health personas, and compiles existing Amazon Web Services training modules into defined pathways for each. These pathways are presented as Amazon Web Services Ramp-Up Guides across three personas:

  • Applied epidemiologists use information systems, survey tools, and other mechanisms to collect qualitative and quantitative data relevant to epidemiologic studies and public health surveillance. They analyze those data with a variety of open source and licensed solutions . The Training Pathway for Applied Epidemiologists helps these professionals become familiar with key cloud concepts; the benefits of the cloud to support modern analytics, data visualization, big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence; and the Amazon Web Services services available to accelerate their work.
  • Public health informaticians not only analyze data, but they also establish information systems to collect, store, and transform those data and information for use. The Training Pathway for Informaticians provides a technical deep dive into the infrastructure and governance of a modern data architecture and analytic services. This pathway is designed to empower informaticians to guide their organization’s data modernization journey so it can scale in times of emergency and be extensible to the evolving data and analytic needs of public health.
  • Bioinformaticians are the bridge between data science, informatics, and biologic sciences. These data scientists of the laboratory may be building data systems to manage genomic sequencing pipelines, or building the pipelines themselves. The Training Pathway for Bioinformaticians presents in-depth learnings on the Amazon Web Services services they will likely need to build genomic sequencing pipelines and analyze those data to support public health surveillance.

Find hands-on training through Immersion Days using public health examples

Self-directed study isn’t for everyone, and some professionals may prefer to set aside a day—or a few 2-3 hour blocks of time—to immerse themselves and their team in skills building. For these folks, persona-specific Immersion Days can help. Delivered by Amazon Web Services solutions architects and subject matter experts, these Immersion Days provide hands-on-keyboard opportunities to work through a public health analytic problem with a set of synthetic data similar to what you might see in your daily activities. The day is intended to present that Art of Now for Public Health training pathway—specific to the selected public health persona—and will cover some of the same key cloud concepts and services identified in the training pathways.

Get customized, multi-day trainings on cloud and specific Amazon Web Services services

If you and your team want to learn more about Amazon Web Services services from a team of expert solution architects and accelerate the time to becoming skilled at using these services, Amazon Web Services offers multi-day, customized trainings. The Amazon Web Services Training and Certification (T&C) team will work with you to understand what you want to learn. If you’re not certain of your needs, the T&C team can help you figure that out with a Learning Needs Assessment (LNA). The LNA identifies skills gaps and make recommendations based upon standard IT competencies and the Training Pathways for Public Health. The T&C team can then propose training modules, design a set of training days, and get your team up to speed on the Amazon Web Services services they need to work with.

What’s next?

Public health encompasses many domains and skill sets. These training pathways can offer an evolving set of resources that will improve with input from public health professionals. If you have feedback, questions, or requests, please contact awspublichealthtraining@amazon.com .

Get started on your training journey with these resources:

  • Art of Now for Public Health pathway
  • Ramp-up Guides
  • Ready for an immersion day, deep-dive, or want to find out what training your team needs? Contact your Amazon Web Services account manager or awspublichealthtraining@amazon.com

Read related stories on the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Blog:

  • Accelerating public health innovation with Amazon Web Services Partners
  • Investing in continuous learning to grow your organization’s future
  • Rethinking how to hire and retain cloud talent in the public sector
  • 4 global skills trends shaping workforce development
  • Security, stability, and speed: Strategy essentials for your mission

Subscribe to the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Blog newsletter to get the latest in Amazon Web Services tools, solutions, and innovations from the public sector delivered to your inbox, or contact us .

Please take a few minutes to share insights regarding your experience with the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Blog in this survey , and we’ll use feedback from the survey to create more content aligned with the preferences of our readers.

Dr. Dawn Heisey-Grove

Dr. Dawn Heisey-Grove

Dr. Dawn Heisey-Grove is the public health analytics leader for the state and local government team at Amazon Web Services (Amazon Web Services). In this role, she’s responsible for helping state and local public health agencies think creatively about how to address their analytics challenges and achieve their long-term goals. She’s spent her career finding new ways to use existing or new data to support public health surveillance and research. Before Amazon Web Services, Dawn led a team at MITRE that developed a novel open-source solution that supports chronic disease surveillance through the creation of longitudinally-linked datasets sourced from clinical and non-clinical data across the community. While at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, she partnered with CDC to explore how electronic clinical quality measures could be used to generate national population-level estimates of hypertension. She also published national statistics on health IT adoption and use with a focus on rural health IT and public health data exchange. Dawn started her career as an infectious disease epidemiologist and public health informaticist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where she was a leader in identifying new technological solutions to automate data capture, securely share data with clinical and local public health partners, and conduct analytics for infectious disease surveillance. Dawn has published over two dozen articles in leading public health, health policy, and health informatics journals. She has a B.S. in Microbiology from University of Maryland—College Park, a MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Boston University, and a PhD in Health Outcomes Research from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Pramod Halapeti

Pramod Halapeti

Pramod Halapeti is a solution architect at Amazon Web Services (Amazon Web Services), where he provides support for customers in the health and human services industry. In this capacity, he assists clients in resolving the business challenges they face and is extremely enthusiastic about serverless technologies. Outside of his professional life, he enjoys going on road trips with his family and exploring national parks.

Venkata Kampana

Venkata Kampana

Venkata Kampana is a senior solutions architect in the Amazon Web Services (Amazon Web Services) Health and Human Services team and is based in Sacramento, CA. In this role, he helps public sector customers achieve their mission objectives with well-architected solutions on Amazon Web Services.

The mentioned AWS GenAI Services service names relating to generative AI are only available or previewed in the Global Regions. Amazon Web Services China promotes AWS GenAI Services relating to generative AI solely for China-to-global business purposes and/or advanced technology introduction.