Exploring the Development of Three Law-Based Competency Models for Practitioners

As public health promotion and protection become increasingly complex and integrated into various fields, public health law is emerging as an important tool for public health professionals. To ensure that public health professionals are effectively trained in public health law principles and theories, educators, trainers, and others who develop educational curricula should integrate public health law-related competencies into their training and workforce development efforts. This article provides three competency models developed by the Public Health Law Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: (a) the public health emergency law competency model, (b) the public health law competency model, and (c) the legal epidemiology competency model. These competency models provide a foundation upon which public health law curricula can be developed for governmental, nongovernmental, and academic public health practitioners. Such standardization of public health law curricula will ameliorate not only the training, but also selection and evaluation of public health practitioners, as well as better align public health training with national public health efforts.