The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has laid bare the limitations of existing public health structures around the world [1]. The resulting health and economic crises have further highlighted the need to build stronger public health infrastructures to fully meet the demands of public health in an equitable, innovative, and sustainable manner. Indeed, the pandemic has clearly identified one of the most untapped, overlooked resources of the current public health workforce (PHWF): its lack of integration of young professionals (YPs) [2]. While the workforce demanded additional resources, YPs existed in surplus. Unfortunately, infrastructure to adequately link them does not exist and YPs actively experience this frustrating disconnect on a daily basis.
YPs, defined here to be students and early career professionals, present great potential for the field of public health [3]. YPs can provide new perspectives and increase diversity, along with providing the necessary human resources the workforce so desperately needs [4]. The public health workforce itself has a constantly evolving definition; this article considers the PHWF to be anyone engaged in providing public health services [5]. While COVID-19 has made cracks in health systems more evident, it was already well-reported that public health needs improved, more sustainable infrastructure [6, 7]. The Youth Call for Action adopted at the Fourth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health called for policies to close the anticipated health worker gap, update health worker education systems to be equitable and interdisciplinary, and increase investment in the development of students and YPs [8]. YPs are an effective way to build workforce capacity and increase the representativeness of public health work; however, calls for inclusion of YPs have been either ineffective or have not been acted upon prior to and during COVID-19 [4, 9].
This commentary aims to address why the inclusion of YPs to date has been largely inadequate and unsuccessful. Drawing from the experiences of YPs in various academic and professional contexts, we shed light on the barriers faced by young public health professionals in hopes of catalysing the necessary transformations to shape public health to be representative, sustainable, effective, and dynamically adaptable to the world’s ever-changing population.