Health Promotion Competencies
Core Public Health Competencies in Canada
Core competencies are the essential knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to effectively practice or carry out your job. These core competencies are the building blocks for effective public health practice and fulfill public health core functions. These competencies include: population health assessment, surveillance, disease and injury prevention, health promotion and health protection.
Core competencies contribute to a more effective workforce and encourages programs and services that are evidence-based, population-focused, ethical, equitable, and client-centred.
Core competencies can help public health organizations in recruitment of skilled staff, identifying training and development needs of staff, and develop job descriptions, interview questions and frameworks for performance measurement.
Please see the Core Public Health Competencies in Canada (2.0) for more information.
The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies
The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies are a set of skills, knowledge and abilities necessary for the effective practice of health promotion. These competencies build upon the Core Competencies for Public Health in Canada. They are specific enough to distinguish the work of health promoters among other public health disciplines and reflect the wide variety of settings and structures of health promotion practice in Canada.
The Health Promoter Competencies include:
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Health promotion knowledge and skills
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Situational assessments
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Plan and evaluate health promotion action
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Policy development and advocacy
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Community mobilization and building community capacity
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Partnership and collaboration
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Communication.
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Diversity and inclusiveness
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Leadership and building organizational capacity
The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies can be used to:
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Increase the understanding of the importance of health promotion
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Standardizes expectation of health promotion practice and actions
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Maximize the use of health promoters in organizations
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Identify training and development needs
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Health promotion job descriptions, interview questions and frameworks for performance measurement.
Please see the Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies for more information.
Health Promoter Competencies’ Toolkit
The Health Promoter Competencies’ Toolkit provides a series of tools to support the use of the Health Promoter Competencies. The Toolkit is designed to be of interest to health promoters, their managers and academic instructors.
The toolkits contains a number of tools including:
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Position profile
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Self-assessment tool
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Health promoter outputs (e.g., briefs, policy analysis, situational assessment)
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Job descriptions
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Interview questions
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Performance appraisal template
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Individual learning plan
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Competencies comparison tool
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Health promoter competencies communication tool
The The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies and Toolkit were developed by Health Promotion Canada.
