​Kathleen Amos, MLIS, Project Manager, Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice, Public Health Foundation

Striving to continually enhance performance is critical for moving public health organizations, and the field of public health as a whole, forward. Through producing and disseminating the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies), the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice (Council on Linkages) supports the public health workforce in developing the knowledge and skills to provide the Essential Public Health Services.

The Council on Linkages has been creating and collecting tools to facilitate understanding and use of the Core Competencies and is interested in your thoughts on the drafts of two tools currently under development: examples or “e.g.s” to clarify competency statements and examples of attainment of competence. Your feedback will help ensure that the resources developed are relevant to the practice of public health and can be effectively used by public health professionals and organizations.

Draft Tool: E.g.s to Clarify the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals

Within the Core Competencies, examples are provided in the form of “e.g.s” to clarify the terminology or further explain the concepts in a competency statement. The Core Competencies already benefit from selected examples of this type, and additional “e.g.s” have been drafted to further enhance understanding of individual competencies. These new “e.g.s” are now available for review, and comments are being accepted until July 31, 2012.

Draft Tool: Examples Demonstrating Attainment of the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals

Understanding the text of a competency statement is just a first step to improving performance. How do you apply that idea to your work and demonstrate that you have developed the necessary competence to perform effectively? Examples illustrating how competence can be demonstrated provide guidance to public health professionals and organizations looking to determine levels of competence. New examples have been drafted for several competencies, primarily in the domains of Financial Planning and Management and Leadership and Systems Thinking, and are available for public comment through July 31, 2012.

The Core Competencies are in wide use, reaching practitioners in public health organizations across the country, and your comments on either of these developing tools will help produce more useful resources for the entire public health workforce. Are the examples suggested in these drafts relevant to your work? Do they support your understanding of the Core Competencies? Are there additional examples that would make the tools even better? Share your opinions today! Comments on these tools may be recorded in the Comments sections below or on the tool webpages, or emailed to Kathleen Amos at [email protected].