Health in All Education: A Transdisciplinary Learning Outcomes Framework

Historical and recent population health issues necessitate the goal of educating and preparing a transdisciplinary workforce with population health knowledge and competence to be able to develop, implement, and evaluate innovative and feasible solutions that not only address multifaceted community health problems downstream but also to be able to predict and prevent those factors that contribute to an inequitable health burden upstream. To identify where population health education is already shared among multiple disciplines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Academic Partnerships to Improve Health program conceptualized the Health In All Education initiative that was implemented in partnership with the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. The purpose of the initiative was to (1) show the importance of integrating population health principles into higher-education transdisciplinary practices; (2) discuss examples of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collaboration with disciplines related to public health (i.e., economics, environmental engineering, health informatics, health law and policy, social work, liberal education in general education); and (3) explore opportunities to promote transdisciplinary learning to prepare for collaborative, interprofessional practice in population health. This article introduces the Health in All Education Learning Outcomes Framework, a set of shared population health concepts identified on the basis of discipline-representative consensus. The following domains were identified as having transdisciplinary applicability on the basis of established public health curricula, competency, and learning outcome models: determinants of health, evidence-based approaches, population health focus, interprofessional practice, community collaboration, environmental health, occupational health, global health, diversity/cultural competence, health systems, finance and budgeting, and health law and policy.