Kathleen Amos, MLIS, Project Manager, Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice, Public Health Foundation
As the yearlong process to revise the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies) nears its end, a preliminary draft of revisions to Tier 2 of the Core Competencies is now available. Although some work remains, particularly in refining the wording of competencies, this draft offers a preview of the concepts that will be included when the final version is released this summer.
The more than 1,000 comments received from the public health community served to guide the development of this draft, as described in the recent PHF Pulse blog post, Behind the Scenes of the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals Revisions. The preliminary draft was discussed by the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice (Council on Linkages) as part of its meeting in April, and the Core Competencies Workgroup is continuing to make improvements as it prepares to present final draft revisions to all three tiers of the Core Competencies to the Council on Linkages for a vote on adoption before the end of June.
As can be seen in this preliminary draft of Tier 2, the majority of the competencies have changed in some way. Changes were most often made to improve the language of the competencies by clarifying and simplifying the wording used, adding examples in the form of “e.g.s” to further explain concepts, and reducing jargon. The content of many competencies remains the same as in the current version of the Core Competencies, and several additional competencies have been created to capture new concepts or expand on existing concepts in more detail. Other highlights of the draft revisions include:
- A small number of competencies have been deleted, and the concepts they addressed have been incorporated into other competencies.
- The number and topic areas of domains remain unchanged.
- Competencies have been reordered within domains to create a more logical progression in skill complexity and to group similar concepts, but no competencies have been moved from one domain to another.
- The term “population health” has been used, where appropriate, to refer to integrated services provided within the community.
Changes made to competencies within Tier 2 will be reflected in the revisions to competencies within Tiers 1 and 3.
The Core Competencies Workgroup is also making plans to assist public health professionals and organizations in transitioning to the revised version of the Core Competencies once it is released. A crosswalk illustrating the connections between the 2010 and 2014 versions will be available, and additional tools will be updated and created based on feedback from the public health community.
So…what do you think? Will these types of revisions make the Core Competencies easier to use, and what resources will help ease the transition between versions? Your thoughts and suggestions are always welcome, either in the Comments section below or by email to kamos@phf.org.
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