Celebrating 10 Years of the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS)

Posted on November 19, 2025 by Sheryl Monks

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series PH WINS 2024

This episode of JPHMP Direct TALK celebrates 10 years of the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS)—the first and only nationally representative survey of the governmental public health workforce. As PH WINS continues to influence how we understand and strengthen this vital sector, guest editors of the newly released PH WINS 2024 supplement—Rachel Hare Bork, Anne Zink, and Claude Jacob—discuss how the data guide workforce development and decision making at every level of public health. They also reflect on the themes covered in their editorials, including the power of connection between public health and healthcare, the importance of helping workers see a meaningful future in the field, and defining a “north star” for the workforce. Overall, this conversation highlights both the progress made and the opportunities ahead to build a thriving, strategic, and resilient public health workforce.

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About Our Guests

Claude A. Jacob, DrPH, MPH, has over two decades of administrative experience in public health. Since July 2021, Dr. Jacob has served as the Public Health Director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. Prior to joining Metro Health, Dr. Jacob has professional experiences having served as Chief Public Health Officer for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Deputy Director for the Office of Health Promotion at the Illinois Department of Public Health, Bureau Chief with the Baltimore City Health Department and Director of Community Affairs at Sinai Health System in Chicago. Jacob received a Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

Anne Zink, MD, is an Emergency Medicine physician in Palmer, Alaska, and a Senior Fellow at the Yale School of Public Health. She co-founded PopHIVE, a data integration platform, and serves as Senior Advisor to The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Brown STAT Network. She also sits on steering committees for the Vaccine Integrity Program, the Gov Act, the Common Health Coalition, and the Biosecurity Game Changer Coalition.

From 2018 to 2024, Dr. Zink served as Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, leading the state through the COVID-19 pandemic and major public health reforms, including reorganizing the Department of Health and Social Services and advancing initiatives in complex care, chronic disease, infectious disease, and youth mental health.

A past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Dr. Zink earned her BA from Bryn Mawr College and M.D. from Stanford University.

Rachel Hare Bork, PhD, is the Director of PH WINS at the de Beaumont Foundation, where she oversees the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS), the only nationally representative survey of the state and local governmental public heath workforce. Throughout her career, Rachel has contributed to and managed multi-million-dollar research efforts aimed at filling knowledge gaps and assessing the effectiveness of initiatives in the areas of workforce development, education leadership, arts learning, and building arts audiences.

Her research has been published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), Health Affairs, The Journal of Public Health Management & Practice, Teachers College Record, the Journal of College Reading and Learning, and Inside Higher Ed.

Rachel holds a PhD in politics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and an MSc in comparative politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She graduated with a BA with honors in political science from the Johns Hopkins University.