Professional Relevance: Meeting the Contemporary Public Health Agenda

Abstract

Recent publications that outline the community health agenda for the 1990s describe processes that are designed to assist local communities in the diagnosis of health problems and development and evaluation of interventions. These documents include: Assessment Protocol for Excellence in Public Health (APEXPH), Planned Approach to Community Health (PATCH), Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives, and Healthy Communities 2000: Model Standards. A close examination of these sentinel documents indicates that the skills called for in these community processes are the same skills outlined in A Framework for the Development of Competency-Based Curricula for Entry-Level Health Educators. It is thereby important for employers and health education practitioners to realize that those individuals prepared in the competencies of health education are well suited to assume a leadership role in the public health agenda of the future.