As health departments begin to assess staff competencies and craft workforce development plans under Domain 8 of the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) Standards and Measures for public health department accreditation, the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies) offer a solid foundation on which to base these activities.

The Core Competencies detail a set of skills desirable for the practice of public health, reflecting the characteristics that staff of public health organizations may want to possess as they work to protect and promote health in the community. The Core Competencies may be used by health departments to begin understanding levels of staff competence, identifying gaps in competence, and formulating workforce development plans that meet staff training needs. Produced by the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice (Council on Linkages), the Core Competencies are the only nationally adopted set of competencies for public health practitioners. They are specifically named within PHAB Standard 8.2, as well as in the Public Health Infrastructure area of Healthy People 2020, and are already being used by health departments across the country. Start using the Core Competencies in your health department by downloading your own copy today.

The Council on Linkages is working to identify and develop tools to help health departments and public health practitioners use the Core Competencies. Existing tools include a mapping of the Core Competencies to the Essential Public Health Services and examples of how to demonstrate attainment of competence. These and others are available on the Core Competencies Tools webpage; watch for this webpage to grow over the coming months as additional tools are completed. If your health department has developed its own Core Competencies tools and is interested in sharing them with the public health community, please contact Kathleen Amos at [email protected].