CEPH Foundational Competencies & Track Competencies
Foundational Competencies
Evidence-Based Approaches to Public Health
1. Apply epidemiological methods to the breadth of settings and situations in public health practice
2. Select quantitative and qualitative data collection methods appropriate for a given public health context
3. Analyze quantitative and qualitative data using biostatistics, informatics, computer-based programming and software, as appropriate
4. Interpret results of data analysis for public health research, policy or practice
Public Health and Healthcare Systems
5. Compare the organization, structure and function of health care, public health and regulatory systems across national and international settings
6. Discuss the means by which structural bias, social inequities and racism undermine health and create challenges to achieving health equity at organizational, community, and systemic levels
Planning and Management to Promote Health
7. Assess population needs, assets and capacities that affect communities’ health
8. Apply awareness of cultural values and practices to the design, implementation, or critique of public health policies or programs
9. Design a population-based policy, program, project or intervention
10. Explain basic principles and tools of budget and resource management
11. Select methods to evaluate public health programs
Policy in Public Health
12. Discuss the policy-making process, including the roles of ethics and evidence
13. Propose strategies to identify stakeholders and build coalitions and partnerships for influencing public health outcomes
14. Advocate for political, social or economic policies and programs that will improve health in diverse populations
15. Evaluate policies for their impact on public health and health equity
Leadership
16. Apply leadership and/or management principles to address a relevant issue
17. Apply negotiation and mediation skills to address organizational or community challenges
Communication
18. Select communication strategies for different audiences and sectors
19. Communicate audience-appropriate (i.e., non-academic, non-peer audience) public health content, both in writing and through oral presentation
20. Describe the importance of cultural competence in communicating public health content
Interprofessional Practice
21. Perform effectively on inter-professional teams
Systems Thinking
22. Apply a systems thinking tool to visually represent a public health issue in a format other than a standard narrative
Generalist Track Competencies
1. Critically synthesize the public health research and practice literature for a selected public health topic
2. Assess the reliability and validity of research methods
3. Assess epidemiological study types using the hierarchy of evidence
4. Critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of epidemiological studies
5. Develop written and oral policy communications to influence decision-makers
6. Determine factors influencing successful policy implementation
7. Evaluate the role of government and financing in shaping health policy and health outcomes
8. Analyze the geographic and demographic distribution of diseases in the U.S. and globally
9. Identify mitigation strategies for regional, national and global diseases
10. Apply skills in evaluation design and implementation to public health programs
11. Assess the ways in which disparities affect the health status of populations
12. Create an advocacy campaign for an organization, keeping in mind organizational considerations, constituents, targets, and long-term goals
13. Apply knowledge and awareness of community needs to develop recommendations for effective community-level public health interventions or local policy changes
14. Develop a budget for a public health program
15. Identify funding sources for public health programs and construct a grant proposal
16. Identify core concepts from behavioral science and behavioral economics and their relevance for public health programs
17. Identify and critically evaluate effective health-related behavior change strategies
18. Create a deterministic model of the transmission and control of an infectious disease, including the model equations, the formula for reproduction ratio, and derivation step
19. Discuss of the advantages and disadvantages of agent-based models compared to deterministic models of disease transmission
20. Describe the use of agent-based models to evaluate public health interventions for the control of infectious diseases
21. Create a codebook and use it to conduct a thematic analysis of qualitative data such as interview transcripts and/or observation notes
22. Apply awareness of research ethics and participant relationships when conducting interviews or observations at the individual or community level
23. Develop novel explanatory theories to answer research questions based on analysis of qualitative data
Global Health Track Competencies
1. Evaluate interventions, programs, policies, or health care systems in international settings or global health context
2. Analyze the burden of disease in a country or region outside the US
3. Examine global health issues through the lens of the social determinants of health or human rights principles
4. Apply the principles of cultural competence when discussing public health in a global or international setting
5. Analyze the roles, relationships, and resources of the entities influencing global health
6. Analyze core global human rights principles
One Health Track Competencies
1. Evaluate and integrate literature from across different disciplines to develop a thorough understanding of a One Health problem or topic
2. Prepare a study proposal (i.e. grant) that reflects your expertise and incorporates the tenets of One Health (i.e. the COHERE guidelines)
3. Design the ideal team of individual experts to investigate a One Health issue with a transdisciplinary approach
4. Critically evaluate scientific research on a food or nutrition policy.
5. Describe the complex factors (e.g. psychological, political, cultural, or economic) that influence what we eat
6. Identify the critical drivers of disease emergence and possible impacts such emergence has on human, animal and environmental health
7. Demonstrate the role of local, state, national and international agencies in controlling transboundary diseases of one-health importance
8. Describe the range of effects that animal diseases (including those that are not zoonotic) can have on human health and confidence in government and agricultural systems
9. Analyze the cultural, economic, health and welfare drivers of diverse stakeholders in response to an animal disease that has environmental and potentially human health consequences
10. Evaluate the role of livestock (poultry, dairy, beef, porcine, aquaculture) in sustainable food systems
11. Describe the metrics associated with animal agriculture and climate change
Epidemiology Track Competencies
1. Demonstrate the ability to understand advanced epidemiologic study design for longitudinal and clustered investigations, self-controlled design, quasi-experimental design, and target trials
2. Critically conduct evaluation of bias from measurement error and misclassification and understand the value of sensitivity analysis and quantitative bias analysis
3. Effectively use advanced data analysis skills to conduct survival analysis, longitudinal and clustered modeling, mediation, and propensity score analysis
4. Demonstrate ability to retrieve and clean data, perform exploratory and regression analyses, build models to answer epidemiologic questions, and visualize the outputs using R, RStudio, and R Markdown
5. Conduct reproducible data analysis using supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods for epidemiologic, genetic or omics data types