New York Learns Public Health

What New York Learns Public Health is

New York Learns Public Health, or NYLearnsPH.com, is the learning management system used for public health training in New York State. The home page describes it as "a web-based tool designed to facilitate the enrollment, tracking and completion of learners in competency-based courses for healthcare providers and staff in state, local public health and allied health agencies throughout New York." It serves two readers at once: the individual health department worker who needs to find and finish a course, and the agency that has to track who completed what.

The pages carry a copyright notice from the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, while help comes from the LMS coordinators by email at edlearn@health.ny.gov or by phone on 518-473-4223. Agencies that want to arrange training are pointed to the Contact Us link.

The catalog

The Course Catalog page states: "There are currently 1038 courses offered in the Course Catalog." A separate Program Catalog sits beside it, along with an Advanced Search. Learners can browse by category, search by keyword, and filter by format: On Demand Recordings, Self-paced Courses, Live Online, In-person, or In-person and Live Online.

The category counts show where the weight of the catalog lies. Emergency Preparedness is the largest group at 265 courses, followed by Administration at 181, Region 2 PHTC at 131, Minority Health & Health Disparities Prevention at 114, Communicable Disease at 97, FEMA at 81, Office of Aging and Long Term Care (OALTC) at 78, Core Public Health at 76, Communication at 66 and Office of Health Emergency Preparedness (OHEP) at 50. Smaller groups cover Infectious Disease/Immunizations, Environmental Health, Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility, Leadership/Management, Maternal and Child Health, Performance Management/Quality Improvement, UAlbany-PHTC-Online, Assessment/Analysis, Injury Prevention, Early Intervention, Epidemiology/Surveillance and Biostatistics, Chronic Disease, Climate and Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Health Literacy, Legal/Ethics, NYSIIS, Access to Care, Finance and Grants, Nutrition, Bureau of Vital Records, Health Commerce System, Human Resources, Animal Health, Oral Health, Evaluation, Laboratory, Geriatrics and Extended Care, and STI/AIDS/HIV/Hepatitis.

The home page says the LMS is "a portal to hundreds of distance-based public health courses in a variety of formats to meet different learners' needs including webcasts and self-paced online courses." It names the content providers behind them:

• the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC);
• the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA);
• NYS Department of Health training from the Office of Health Emergency Preparedness (OHEP), NYSIIS, Vaccines for Children (VFC), the Office of Aging and Long Term Care (OALTC), Commerce Training Institute (CTI) and others;
• the Region 2 Public Health Training Center;
• PHTC-Online courses from the University at Albany College of Integrated Health Sciences, Center for Public Health Continuing Education;
• the Region VI Public Health Training Center.

It also offers "many traditional, in-person, classroom courses," including many of the core courses in the Basic Environmental Health Program and much of the Health Emergency Preparedness Program training. Recent announcements on the home page give a feel for what is current: new 2026 PHN2 and SPHN continuing education programs, a 2026 Public Health Educator CE program, Public Health Live! on-demand training, a Region 2 PHTC "Log-in 2Learn" series, new on-demand self-paced courses, a four-part Grant Writing Series from NYSACHO, and NYSDOH-CONF100, "Keeping Business and Info Confidential in NYS."

Mandated continuing education programs

For staff in New York's local health departments, this is the system of record for several required programs. The home page lists "Mandated Continuing Education Programs (CEPs) including those required by Part 11 of the State Sanitary Code," and says the LMS "is host to enrollment and tracking" for:

• the Basic Environmental Health Program, mandated for NYS LHD Sanitarians and Environmental Health Technicians;
• the Public Health Educator Continuing Education Program, mandated for LHD staff in that title;
• the Public Health Nurse 2 Continuing Education Program, mandated for LHD staff in that title;
• the Supervising Public Health Nurse Continuing Education Program, mandated for LHD staff in that title;
• the Foundations in Public Health Certificate Program.

How learners use it

Registration is open from the home page. The FAQ explains that a new user creates a username and password, is signed in automatically, and receives a confirmation email; a secondary email address can be added so that notices still arrive after a job change. To take a course, a learner finds it in the catalog and clicks the orange Enroll button "for the course section that best meets your needs," then starts it with the orange Launch course button from "My Current Courses" or "My Courses." Once logged in, the home page shows the learner's Current, Required, and Recommended Courses. Face-to-face courses show location details instead.

Some online courses are available 24/7, while others open only for a registration period set by the instructor and announced on the calendar. Face-to-face courses and conferences also take registration online. Logged-in users can submit events to the calendar, and the FAQ says submissions are reviewed and approved for display within 1-2 business days.

The self-assessment tool is the most useful planning feature. A learner rates their confidence against a set of competencies on the My Assessments page, and the system then recommends courses for any competency rated "lower than a 4." Learners can also log non-LMS courses in a personal training portfolio, which the FAQ describes as "simply for your record-keeping."

Quizzes, evaluations and certificates

After viewing a course, the learner returns to My Courses and completes any quiz due. Certificates come as PDF files, downloaded from My Completed Courses with a View Certificate link and opened in Adobe Reader. Two things can block a certificate, according to the FAQ: the course may be from a third party that issues its own certificate ("e.g., FEMA, PHTCs, etc."), or the learner has not completed the course evaluation.

The FAQ says all modern browsers work, naming Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari, and that cookies and JavaScript must be enabled. Learners behind a strict workplace firewall may have trouble launching courses served from third-party content systems and are asked to contact the coordinators.

The site publishes no course fees. Its FAQ says only that some online courses may require the purchase of textbooks or other materials, and that face-to-face trainings usually incur travel and other related costs.

Who it suits

NYLearnsPH.com suits staff of New York's state and local health departments and allied health agencies, especially those in titles covered by the mandated CE programs, since enrollment and tracking for those programs run here. It suits emergency preparedness staff, given the size of that part of the catalog and the FEMA and OHEP content. Public health nurses, educators and sanitarians will find their required programs in one place, and anyone wanting to plan training can start with the self-assessment. For an agency, the system gives learners, trainers and administrators one place to find, promote, manage and track enrollment and completion of competency-based coursework, and the coordinators can be asked to set up training. Learners taking FEMA or training center courses should expect those certificates to come from the provider rather than from the LMS.