Below is an outline of information that has been compiled regarding the Council's efforts to revise and update the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals.

General

Draft of the Revised Core Competencies - An in progress draft that looks at mid-tier professionals, e.g., someone with an MPH and 5 years of experience. Please note: These revisions are a work in progress, not a final draft.

Summary of the Ecological Model of Public Health - A bief summary of the ecological approach to public health

The Local Health Department Workforce: Findings from the 2005 National Profile of Local Health Departments Study by the National Association of County and City Health Officials – Included statistics that 72% of respondents are aware of the Core Competencies and that 65% of those that are aware of the Core Competencies use them in some way.

West Central Georgia

Long Beach, California

Eastern Idaho

Houston, Texas

The following additional local health departments were contacted, but did not respond: Palm Beach County Health Department, Worchester County Health Department, Lake County Health Department, Westchester County Health Department, Wauwaosa Health Department, Pierce County Health Department

A short summary of Bloom's Taxonomy was compiled by C. William Keck, Chair of the Council on Linkages. This website from the University of Washington also has useful information on Bloom's Taxonomy, a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for students. The Taxonomy is often used in creating sets of competencies.

Competency statements might be confusing to practitioners who have little if any training or education in public health. Can they be simplified or structured in a manner that is more easily understood by the group? – Christopher Atchison, email, 10/28/07

Consider if it is feasible for individuals to consistently self-assess their competency with the current Council on Linkages competency statements. Many statements have more then one verb or action element. Does the user/learner focus then on the full statement or do they unconsciously focus on one part of the statement? – Christopher Atchison, email, 10/28/07

Look to align the competencies with the PH performance standards, NACCHO's operational definition of a local health department, and other landmark publications and add something concerning public laboratories. – Christopher Atchison, email, 10/28/07

The eight domain organization is helpful. – Christopher Atchison, email, 10/28/07

The Core Competencies should be updated to incorporate the experience with them since they were developed. Specifically, we should consider expanding to other disciplines within public health, consider making distinctions between state and local public health functions, and develop some kind of map or directory of how they have been used in supporting practice. We should also consider how the Core Competencies might be used in the accreditation process that is being developed. – Susan Allan, email, 10/24/07

The Core Competencies are used by state public health agencies as a tool for creating job descriptions, not as a required checklist, but as a suggestive tool. State public health agencies also use the Core Competencies to build training curriculum, as a tool for employee evaluations, and as selection criteria for professional development and succession planning programs. – Melissa Lewis (ASTHO staff), through Susan Allan, email, 10/24/07

Workgroup members agreed with Kathy Miner’s comments regarding the standardization of wording. Dr. Miner used the words “define” and “describe” as examples of words that need to have the same meaning across all competencies. – Core Competencies Workgroup Call, 11/14/07

The Communication domain, in particular, needs revision. – Mark Edgar, Core Competencies Workgroup Call, 11/14/07 (Dr. Edgar is the lead author of an article on the validity of the Core Competencies, an abstract of which is available here.)

Measurability at some level is important, but it does not have to be perfect. – Kathy Miner, Core Competencies Workgroup Call, 11/14/07

PHTCs code courses by the Core Competencies, mostly at the “aware” level. Representatives noted some confusion about what “competent” means and suggested that there is a need for an “action component” in each competency.

There is the opportunity to use the Core Competencies as a tool for accreditation as health departments need a way to demonstrate that they have a competent workforce.

Representatives suggested developing scenarios/examples for each competency in order to help users understand what would constitute each level of competence.

The Research Agenda identified eight research themes, one of which was “Education, Training, and Credentialing the Public Health Workforce.” This theme was summarized as an effort to “Identify and validate the competencies needed by individual workers to perform essential public health functions, determine the best methods for developing such competencies and assessing the achievement of competencies among the workforce.” (page 19)

The Research Agenda stated a number of times the need to determine the extent to which the Core Competencies are measurable and what would make them more measurable.

A number of sets of competencies have been written for specific professions within public health. A list of some of these sets are below.

Core Competencies for Injury and Violence Prevention, National Training Initiative for Injury and Violence Prevention, May 2005

Competencies for Epidemiologists, Northwest Center for Public Health Practice at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine, October 2005

Competencies for Applied Epidemiologists in Governmental Public Health Agencies, Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 2006. Available at the CSTE website: http://www.cste.org/competencies.asp and CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/od/owcd/cdd/aec/

Genomics Competencies for the Public Health Workforce, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001

Comparison of Health Education and Basic Public Health Professional Competencies, American Journal of Health Studies, January 1, 2006

QUAD Council Public Health Nursing Competencies, Quad Council of Public Health Nursing Organizations, April 3, 2003

Core Public Health Worker Competencies for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Center for Health Policy, Columbia University School of Nursing, April 2001

Public Health Informatics Competencies Introduction, Northwest Center for Public Health Practice, August 2002

Environmental Health Competency Guidelines Project, American Public Health Association, 2007

Competency-to-Curriculum Toolkit – developed by the Center for Health Policy, Columbia University and the Association of Teachers of Preventative Medicine