A&T Leads Initiative to Boost N.C. Data Scientist Workforce with $1.03M Award

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (April 7, 2025) – North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University has received funding that extends its proven leadership in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic into building a strong, qualified workforce of health data scientists across the state.

The North Carolina Division of Public Health (NC DPH) awarded N.C. A&T $1.03 million to address data modernization workforce needs.

The initiative builds on the foundational work done by NC DPH in partnership with the university through the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) Health Equity Data Consortium, based at A&T, which previously conducted a statewide COVID-19 health disparities assessment. This award allows HBCU Health Equity Data Consortium partners to continue collaborating on health disparity research while also creating new pathways of connection between state government, local governments and HBCU/Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) partners.

“That effort highlighted the value of leveraging HBCU networks to address public health challenges, and this next phase focuses on extending that success into the field of data science,” said Padonda B. Webb ‘03, DNP, FNP-BC, assistant vice chancellor of Health and Wellness.

This award leverages A&T – and the infrastructure it built through the HBCU Health Equity Data Consortium – to help the NC DPH determine how to increase the expertise and capacity of data science positions across state and local health departments, making them more efficient and effective. Project manager Martha Anne Sperandio is working with Brandy Baldwin, student health services administrative operations director, on this initiative.

The next steps following the COVID-19 pandemic include strengthening public health systems, ensuring that North Carolina has the capacity to respond and serve its people when necessary, said Sperandio.

“We’ve already seen the need for this recently with the destruction brought on by Hurricane Helene to western North Carolina,” she said. “Part of strengthening our public health systems involves strengthening and supporting our public health staff. This effort is meant to assess and then build the data science skills of staff across the state, ensuring they are prepared and able to make data-driven decisions in their public health initiatives.”

NC DPH’s vision is to lay the groundwork now through data collection and strategic planning, then implement skill and capability building programs through November 2025. It will continue to assess the success of the programs and make any necessary strategic pivots to these efforts through November 2027. 

“One new pathway we’re supporting is the NC DPH fellowship program, which allows recent graduates to gain full-time employment alongside mentoring, peer learning and leadership development courses,” said Sperandio. “We are promoting this opportunity as it will help strengthen the data science workforce and foster a more diverse talent pool, ensuring the public health workforce mirrors the communities it serves.”

An additional benefit has been fostering connections with faculty and researchers across HBCU/MSIs in North Carolina. “This work – and the HBCU Health Equity Data Consortium at large – allows researchers to work together, learn from one another, and support each other in their academic pursuits,” said Sperandio. “It’s been beautiful to witness collaboration across institutions in pursuit of advancing health disparity research.”

The overarching goal of the work is to identify gaps and strengths in capacity and expertise of NC DPH’s and local health departments’ data science positions and to build, implement and monitor capacity and skill building programs to strengthen North Carolina’s data science workforce.