Public Health Workforce Gaps, Impacts, and Improvement Strategies from COVID-19

Feedback

Response

Reviewer 1

This is an interesting work integrating the qualitative and quantitative investigations on the Public health workforce problems under the impact of COVID-19. I enjoy reading this manuscript. Here are my comments.

Thank you for your comments. Please see our responses below.

Can you please give more introductions on the public health workforce at different level of governments in the introduction? Particularly, the different duties and responsibilities during the COVID-19 if possible.

This manuscript focuses on local public health rather than all levels. Therefore, we added in a clarification earlier in the manuscript noting that we are focused on local public health (line 63) and added a sentence describing their primary responsibilities during COVID-19 (lines 35-38).

Which criteria is used to select the focus group participants? Is it possibly relevant to the COVID-19 severity?

We added a sentence further clarifying participant selection in lines 103 – 105).

In section 2.2, it seems that the questions could be answered by investigation. Is there any other data support available in addition to the questionnaire.

Thank you for the comment. The study design leverages a mixed methods approach where the investigation combines qualitative inquiry via focus groups with a quantitative survey methodology.

The quality of figures are poor.

These figures have been uploaded as separate files, which are clearer.

The negative impact of COVID-19 can result in many socioeconomic burdens. But the asymptomatic infections should also be considered. Please see this article https://doi.org/10.3390/fractalfract6040197

Thank you for the reference Pan et al. (2022). The focus of this research article is focus group feedback elicited by participants with respect to workforce gaps and impacts with respect to COVID-19, both symptomatic and asymptomatic. The suggested paper is valuable, but does not bear on the issues in the present research.

Will your study offer some guidance or comparison with other states or countries.

Thank you for the suggestion. While we do not directly name other states or countries, we do allude to others throughout the discussion. Please see lines 349 – 350, 390-392, 394-396.

Line 87-88 QUAL->qual-> integration. Why capitalized QUAL only?

Per Creswell (Creswell, J.W.; Plano Clark, V.L. Designing and conducting mixed methods research, 3rd ed.; Sage Publications Inc.: 2018), “Qual” is capitalized and not “quant” as capitalization indicates the method priority. Please see lines 93-97 for this explanation.

Feedback

Response

Reviewer 2

The methods and analysis presented in this manuscript are sound and add nuance to the national discussion of urgent needs in the public health sector.

Thank you for your comments. Please see our responses below.

The manuscript would benefit from a thorough copyedit and reformatting of the tables

We have edited the paper and will work with editorial to ensure tables are formatted correctly.

Repetition of the theme numbers is not necessary.

Thank you for the suggestion and we will defer to editorial as to whether to include theme numbers or not.

A few specific comments follow with line references.

45: not just considering--they are actually leaving public health

This reference uses the words “planning to leave,” thus we change the wording to match.

58-59: this is an example among several of awkward syntax

These awkward syntaxes have been reviewed and revised through the thorough copyedit.

75-76: a citation would be helpful here and why the reference to the social service safety net?

We added a citation for this statement. We also added “social service safety nets” to our opening paragraph, which ties in with this statement.

81: This sentence reads as if it were lifted from the grant proposal (future tense.

This sentence has been revised to keep the tenses aligned.

266: 19% is not "most"

This sentence has been revised for clarity .

281 and following: review text to make sure the distinctions between data in Table 6 and Fig. 2 are clearer to the reader

We only have three tables, so we are unsure which table is being referred to. However, during our thorough copyedit, we paid close attention to the text describing the tables and figures to ensure the reader can distinguish between the data presented in each.

284-6: this is an example of sentences that seem to be missing words, again calling for a careful read and copyedit

We have completed a careful read and copyedit, which included careful attention to phrasing.

296: correct term is "exemplified"

This word has been changed.

318: should this be "counterpart counties" rather than "counter counties"?

Since this is in a participant’s quote, it should be left as is. To add clarity, we added “[part]” after “counter.”

397: the word "potentially" weakens the concluding sentence

The word “potentially” has been removed.