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Advancing the public health workforce to achieve organizational excellence
Draft Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals Open for Comment

Date: 6/15/2021 6:15 PM

Related Categories: Council on Linkages, Workforce Development

Topic: Council on Linkages, Workforce Development

Tag: Competencies, Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals, Council on Linkages, Performance Improvement, Workforce Development

Author: Kathleen Amos

​​​​​​​Kathleen Amos, MLIS, Director, Academic/Practice Linkages, Public Health Foundation

A preliminary draft of proposed revisions to the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies) is now available for open comment. Share your thoughts and help shape the future direction of public health workforce development.

The Core Competencies describe foundational or crosscutting knowledge and skills for professionals working in public health. As the field changes, the Core Competencies are regularly reviewed and revised to ensure these competencies continue to reflect the reality of public health and meet the needs of the public health workforce. This revision process is heavily informed by input from the public health and population health community, and feedback heard during an initial open comment period in late 2020-early 2021 is guiding proposed revisions.

Among other aspects, the feedback highlighted a number of content areas that could be expanded, reinforced, incorporated, or addressed in other ways to strengthen the Core Competencies and a desire to make the competency set easier to use. The preliminary draft aims to address this feedback and consists of two components:
The Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice (Council on Linkages) invites feedback from the public health and population health community on this preliminary draft. Feedback is welcome on any aspect of the draft, including:
  • Anything you particularly like or dislike in the draft
  • Whether the concepts being added to the Core Competencies capture needed knowledge and skills
  • Whether the proposed structure would make it easier to use the Core Competencies
  • Training, tools, or other resources that would help you use the Core Competencies
Feedback can be shared by:
Feedback shared will help to further refine the draft Core Competencies as the Council on Linkages moves toward a revised version of the competency set in the fall.

This draft is preliminary, and in addition to edits based on your feedback, edits are expected in the final version of the Core Competencies to round out the wording of competencies, adjust the order of individual competencies and examples, harmonize with other workforce development resources, and finalize the structure of the competency set.

Feedback is welcome through August 15, 2021. Share yours today and help shape the future of the public health workforce.
 
Questions? Please visit the Core Competencies revision process webpage for additional details about the revision process or contact me at kamos@phf.org​.​​​

July 27, 2021 Update: The open comment period has been extended through August 15, 2021.

Comments

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Kathleen Amos

7/14/2021

Thank you so much for the feedback, Riley! The revisions are very much a work in progress, and this will be really helpful as we continue to make updates.

Riley Reyes

7/7/2021

Thank you for your work on this. It’s great to see these updates. I think there are additional opportunities to specifically call out and highlight some health equity related topics, particularly in alignment with ASHTO’s Triple Aims of Health Equity. SDoH: PH professionals should have content knowledge of Social Determinants of Health (SDoH). I know this is called out in Data Analytics but I would tie it in under Health Equity as well. PH professionals should be able to incorporate SDoH and root causes of health inequities in all guidance, comms, reporting, and narratives. HiAP: I also think there may be opportunities to include and call out Health in All Policies more explicitly under both Policy Development and Health Equity. Engage in cross-sector collaboration to achieve common goals, that sort of thing. From a systems perspective, it may also be helpful to call out in the intro that this framework concerns itself with only the level of the individual or professional. Might be helpful to recognize the constellation of agency, jurisdiction, system, etc. that all interface with the individual to create the conditions that impact our ability to carry out the work. Many thanks for your work on this!

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