Below, you will find information about the revised Core Competencies, other competencies sets and related information, information about CDC's goal to identify and validate competencies needed by public health workers to perform the essential public health functions, comments made about the Core Competencies by practitioners, and information about how some local health departments are using the Core Competencies.

General
Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (PDF): This document contains the new Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals that were unanimously adopted by the Council on Linkages on May 3, 2010.

Summary of the Ecological Model of Public Health: A brief 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 indicated that 72% of respondents are aware of the Core Competencies and that 65% of those that are aware of the Core Competencies use them.

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Related Sets of Competencies
A number of "discipline- specific" public health competencies sets have been developed. View a these sets by clicking on the links below:

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

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: www.cste.org/competencies.asp and CDC website: www.cdc.gov/od/owcd/cdd/aec/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Office of Workforce and Career Development (OWCD) Research Agenda
The Research Agenda (PDF) identifies eight research themes, one of which is “Education, Training, and Credentialing the Public Health Workforce" in 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." It also states that there is a need to determine the extent to which the Core Competencies are measurable and what would make them more measurable.

Mark Edgar, PhD and others recently published a paper entitled "Construct Validity of the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals." The abstract outlines that the results of a study done by the authors show that the Core Competencies are a valid tool for assessing the competency of professionals in the public health workforce.

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Comments from Council on Linkages Members
A short summary of Bloom's Taxonomy (PDF) was compiled by C. William Keck, Chair of the Council on Linkages. The University of Washington also has useful information on Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's Taxonomy is often used to create competencies sets.

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

The eight domain organization is helpful. – Christopher Atchison

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

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)

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Comments from the Public Health Training Centers (PHTCs)

The Core Competencies can be used as a tool for accreditation purposes since health departments need a way to demonstrate that they have a competent workforce.

Examples of each competency should be developed in order to help users understand what would constitute each level of competence.

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Local Health Department Interviews
With the help of data gathered by the National Association of County and City Health Officials, a number of local health departments that reported using the Core Competencies were contacted and interviewed about their experiences. Write-ups of the interviews are available below:

West Central Georgia (PDF)

Long Beach, California (PDF)

Eastern Idaho (PDF)

Houston, Texas (PDF)

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