Decoding Training Needs: Using Relevance and Exposure to Identify Training Needs in the Retail Food Regulatory Workforce

Effective and consistent training approaches are necessary for capacity building in the environmental public health workforce, including individuals involved in retail food regulatory work. The retail food regulatory workforce can, however, lack standardized training, promotion, and retention practices. Additionally, workforce demographics suggest a high turnover rate in the near future that will require targeted training efforts to maintain food safety standards. We analyzed data from the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA)-Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Retail Food Program Training Needs Assessment to better understand workforce training needs overall and by job level. Using a 4 -quadrant approach to plot the relevance of and exposure to validated retail food safety knowledge areas, we show the knowledge areas that need priority focus for workforce training. We demonstrate the importance of our approach and suggest that it can be applied to further assessment of training needs in the retail food regulatory workforce and beyond.