Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies

skills to improve health, health equity and determinants of health

Description

The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies builds upon the Core Competencies for Public Health in Canada providing greater detail regarding the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for the practice of health promotion.

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 respond to several existing challenges:

  • Relative importance of health promotion is increasing (e.g. increase burden of chronic disease, concern for health inequalities)
  • Misunderstanding of the role and best use of health promoter positions
  • Diversity of potential training paths
  • A lack of consistency in health-promotion position descriptions
  • Need to better align training programs and continuing education with workforce needs

Who Can Use Them?

For health promoters (students and practitioners):

  • Promotes the understanding of a common set of expectations to effectively plan, deliver and evaluate health promotion initiatives.
  • Support individuals’ health promotion skills enhancement and professional development.

 For managers:

  • Supports the recruitment, development and retention of health promotion practitioners.
  • Supports a common set of expectations for what skills and knowledge are required by health promoters in the workforce.
  • Informs the development of competency-based job descriptions and the assists in assessing performance.

For academic institutions:

  • Informs the content of health promotion training programs and continuing education.
  • Supports health promoters in acquiring the necessary skills and training to be effective in the workforce.

HP Competencies and Toolkit

The Pan-Canadian Health Promoter Competencies (en français) are publicly available free-of-charge.

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, and their managers and academic instructors.

The Toolkit is available to HPC members only. Get involved, and become a member today!