FOREWORD

The State Training Team (STT) in FDA’s Division of Human Resource Development (DHRD) is pleased to provide this 2003 Catalog of Courses and Training Materials.  Our courses, satellite broadcasts, and training materials cover a wide range of topics with various levels of complexity to address the needs of newly hired as well as seasoned public health professionals.

What’s new in state training?  The division has created ORA-U, a training “university” comprised of specific curricula, (which we call certification “schoolhouses,”) for professional specialties, such as a retail food inspector or a shellfish inspector. The school houses detail the courses and on-the-job training required to achieve and maintain certification in that area of expertise.  ORA-U has developed online web-based courses to supplement traditional face-to-face courses, to provide training and certification needs for FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA.)  We are proud to also offer free access to ORA-U to our state, local, and tribal partners.  Our vision is for ORA-U to serve as not only a source of learning opportunities, but also as a provider of certification for state, local, and tribal regulators to demonstrate through applied training and on-the-job experience that they can competently perform their regulatory work.   

The Division of Human Resource Development has been approved as an Authorized Provider of continuing education units (CEU) by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET.)  As course applications are reviewed and approved by our CEU committee, CEUs will be awarded to course participants for both online and face-to-face courses.  

The face-to-face courses detailed in this catalog have been awarded based on our annual survey process. The survey is distributed each spring to the lead health and agriculture regulatory agencies in each state who are asked to identify training needs in their jurisdictions.  The requests from each state are then prioritized in each of the five FDA regions.    Although the courses are specifically designed to address the training needs of our state, local, and tribal regulatory partners, participants from FDA, other federal agencies, academia, and industry are welcome to attend.   Please contact the local registration contact noted for each course to inquire about space availability and their registration process.

We are constantly working to develop new courses and materials and address new requests for learning.   We also continue to partner with various organizations, such as the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO), the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE), to develop face-to-face and web-based courses.

In addition to our on-site and web-based courses, our library contains an extensive number of training materials, including videos of all of our past satellite broadcasts, that are available for loan.  You can obtain the most current information for all STT training events and resources by checking our web site at:

http://www.fda.gov/ora/training/course_ora.html

We look forward to the opportunity to work with our state, local, and tribal regulatory partners to provide quality training in support of our common public health mission.  We are always interested in ways to improve our service, so please don’t hesitate to share your ideas with us.

11-19-02