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Advancing the public health workforce to achieve organizational excellence
Crosswalk of the 2021 and 2014 Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals

Overview

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This resource is available as an Excel file (above) and as a pdf file (available below).


This crosswalk of the 2021 and 2014 versions of the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies) illustrates the relationships between specific competencies within these two versions. It contains three competency maps – one for each of the three tiers comprising the Core Competencies – and can be used by public health professionals and organizations to help transition workforce development efforts that have been relying on the 2014 Core Competencies to the 2021 version​.


The 2021 version of the Core Competencies improves harmonization among efforts that impact the workforce by aligning with concepts from the 10 Essential Public Health Services, Public Health 3.0, Public Health Accreditation Board Standards and Measures, Council on Education for Public Health Accreditation Criteria, Certified in Public Health Domain Areas, Strategic Skills for the Governmental Public Health Workforce, and other competency and skill sets; adds and expands content focused on health equity, management and finance, environmental health and justice, emergency preparedness and response, policy and advocacy, and communication; and is reorganized into a new structure making the Core Competencies easier to use. This new simplified structure includes competency statements for all public health professionals, reduced jargon and unnecessary/overly complicated wording, reduced the number of competency statements from 92 to 56, and retained 8 domains and 3 tiers.  Additionally, this new structure allows for added subcompetencies and updated examples meant to provide additional details relevant to public health practice. 


Due to these changes:

  • ​The Cultural Competency Domain in the 2014 version of the Core Competencies was renamed Health Equity Domain to reflect more relevant language and concepts of health equity.

  • While there is a separate Health Equity Domain in the 2021 version of the Core Competencies, concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice have been woven throughout competency and subcompetency statements in all domains. 

  • Individual competencies or subcompetencies in the 2021 version may map to multiple competencies in the 2014 version. This typically occurred when narrow concepts were combined into a broader concept in the 2021 version  or when competencies were found to be duplicative from the 2014 version.

  • Multiple competencies or subcompetencies in the 2021 version may map to a single competency in the 2014 version. This typically occurred when a broad concept in the 2014 version of the Core Competencies was broken down into its component parts in the 2021 version.

  • A competency or subcompetency in the 2021 version of the Core Competencies may have no equivalent competency in the 2014 version. This occurred when new competencies were added in response to feedback from the public health community or to round out concepts not adequately covered in the 2014 version.

  • A competency in the 2014 version of the Core Competencies may have no equivalent competency or subcompetency in the 2021 version. The purpose of the revision process was to streamline the competencies relevant to the practice of public health for all public health professionals. Some 2014 competencies were deemed outdated or were folded into broader concepts in the 2021 version. With the newly simplified structure there is not a one-to-one mapping of 2021 competencies to 2014 competencies. 


Changes in Doman Names are reflected below: 
​2014 Domains
​2021 Domains
  • ​Analytical/Assessment Skills
  • Policy Development/Program Planning Skills
  • Communication Skills
  • Cultural Competency Skills
  • Community Dimensions of Practice Skills
  • Public Health Sciences Skills
  • Financial Planning and Management Skills
  • Leadership and Systems Thinking Skills
  • Data Analytics and Assessment Skills 
  • ​Policy Development and Program Planning Skills 
  • Communication Skills 
  • Health Equity Skills
  • Community Partnership Skills 
  • Public Health Sciences Skills
  • Management and Finance Skills
  • Leadership and Systems Thinking Skill​s


When using this crosswalk to compare organizational competency assessments based on the 2021 and 2014 versions of the Core Competencies, caution should be used. Competencies in the 2021 version do not always directly align with competencies in the 2014 version, and the new concepts added may lead to increased expectations of competence. Therefore, scores for individual competencies and each of the eight domains may not be entirely comparable between assessments taken using the 2021 and 2014 versions of the Core Competencies. ​


The crosswalk of the 2021 and 2014 versions of the Core Competencies is also available 
in Excel format above.


Download PDF





For more information, please contact Mayela Arana at marana@phf.org.​


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