A great many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

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A great many people think that they are thinking
when they are merely rearranging their
prejudices. William James
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From Competencies to CompetenceASPH IOM
MeetingChicago, IllinoisMay 4, 2004

• Kathy Miner, PhD, MPH, CHES
• Denise Koo, MD, MPH
• Kathy Vincent, LCSW

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Objectives for This Session

• Describe the issues that underpin the competency
  movement.
• Integrate public health competency efforts into
  recommendations of the IOM report.
• Consider how public health competencies can
  influence the academic and practice communities.

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Part I Competency Basics By Kathleen
Miner
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WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT COMPETENCIES?

• Because
• They make explicit the expected performance of
  agencies and people.
• They link content to skills.
• They identify gaps in performance.
• They outline strategies to improve performance.
• They serve as indicators for quality assurance.
• They characterize professional practice.

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Workforce Competencies

• Are statements of complex performance within the
  workplace, akin to the KSAs of job
  classifications.
• Can consist of a series of embedded tasks that
  are either sequential or parallel.
• Are demonstrated over long periods of time.
• Require contextual measurement.
• Allow for a range of indicators to measure
  competence.

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Instructional Competencies

• Are the building blocks of learning experiences.
• Structure the learning activities.
• Require higher levels of performance to be built
  upon lower level ones.
• Determine the measurement indicators.
• Assume measurement in the short term.

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Competency Challenges

• Partnering between academia and practice in the
  adoption and use of overarching competencies.
• Translating the existing competency sets into
  formats that inform training and workforce
  preparation.
• Selecting competency indicators that measure the
  effects of training.
• Designing instrumentation that measures the
  competence of individuals and of groups.
• Collecting the data.
• Finding the time.

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Hermits have no peer pressure. Steven Wright