What do public health and health care professionals have in common? Are there skills that are essential for success in both areas? Early in March, the Public Health Foundation’s (PHF’s) President, Ron Bialek, MPP, and Senior Quality Advisor, Jack Moran, PhD, set out to answer these questions with a special forum on Aligning Public Health and Health Care – Core Competencies for Population Health Professionals during the Association for Community Health Improvement’s (ACHI’s) 2015 National Conference. ACHI is a personal membership group of the American Hospital Association, comprised of professionals from not-for-profit hospitals and health systems, among other organizations. This interactive session focused on the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies), a consensus set of foundational skills for individuals working in public health, and drew more than 40 participants.

 

During this session aimed at hospital staff with population health responsibilities, Mr. Bialek and Dr. Moran led participants through a prioritization process designed to identify competencies within the Core Competencies most relevant to hospital needs related to population health. Using a modified version of the Core Competencies and a voting process, participants initially identified 23 competencies within the eight domains of the Core Competencies important for today’s hospital workforce and then further narrowed in on the following eight essential population health competencies:

 In addition, five areas of importance not reflected in the top eight were highlighted in subsequent discussion:

Although originally designed for more traditional public health professionals, the Core Competencies have proven – in this setting and others – to also be highly applicable for health care professionals, especially those specifically focusing on population health. The response from ACHI members to using the Core Competencies for population health activities has been positive, and PHF and ACHI are partnering to make technical assistance and training around competencies and a variety of other areas available to hospitals and health systems.

 

Your responses to these population health competencies efforts are appreciated as well. How have you use the Core Competencies in achieving population health goals? Do the population health competency areas identified above capture essential skills for the hospital workforce? Does finding competency areas in common between public health and health care professionals create opportunities for cross-training and alignment of training activities? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below or by email to Kathleen Amos at kamos@phf.org.