ICAPHE-EPHF Competency Questionnaire

This research examines how public health competences can be integrated into curricula. We draw on the World Health Organization’s Global competency and outcomes framework for the essential public health functions (2024, pp. 23–24) which refines elements of the Global Competency Framework for Universal Health Coverage (2022, pp. 6–7) and identifies 20 competences across six domains.

The 2024 framework defines competences as “a person’s ability to integrate and apply the relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, demonstrated through behaviours, to the performance of practice activities to the standard required for the context.” For behaviours, the 2024 work uses the UHC definition of behaviours as, “observable conduct towards other people or tasks that expresses a competency. Behaviours are measurable in the performance of tasks.”

The WHO (2024) describe these 20 competences as, “forming a theoretical framework for describing good practice.”

Our research asks whether these theoretical competences reflect global practice. To explore this, we aim to contact a broad range of courses and programmes across the world to determine whether these competences are explicitly taught or addressed in their curricula.

Before proceeding, you must provide ETHICS CONSENT, as required by our ethical approval. Consent only needs to be given once per visit and you may review the consent information at any time.

Please begin by entering the institutional details at the top of the form. These remain fixed for your submission, and every subsequent programme you add will be assumed to belong to the same school, faculty, department, or host institution. After providing these details, you may add more programmes (e.g., MSc, MPH, PhD) and indicate which competences are covered within each.

For each programme you wish to report, complete the programme name and level, then review the six competency domains. Click the small arrow (▸ / ▾) beside each domain heading to expand or collapse the list of competences (the ‘expand all’ button will expand all). Tick all competences that are explicitly covered within that programme and then indicate how they are covered. To do this, please use the two indicators on the right-hand side:

Learning = 📘 indicates that the competence is taught in some manner, whether online, offline, through instruction, or by self-learning.
Observation = 👁️ concerns whether the competence is observed through assessment or other activities.

As you will see, some of the competences may be multi-faceted. We suggest reading them in a holistic, all-embracing manner rather than focusing on detailed sub-elements.

If your programme teaches competences not captured in the six domains, you may record these under “Other competences taught or covered (optional)”, using the text boxes provided (maximum of five entries).

If you wish to report more than one programme from the same institution, click “+ Add programme” to create an additional section. You can remove any extra programmes using “Remove programme.

At any point, you may click “Preview selections” to view a summary of your inputs before submission, or “Clear” to reset the questionnaire.

Under no circumstances are you being asked to complete all competences. We only ask please that you answer as honestly as possible as the aim is to build a realistic understanding before their inclusion in a global accreditation scheme.

You are invited to take part in a short questionnaire examining how public health courses and programmes incorporate key competences. The survey takes about five to ten minutes and involves ticking boxes about the competences your programme or course explicitly teaches or covers.

Participation is voluntary. You may stop the survey at any time before submitting your responses.

Your responses will be confidential but not anonymous, as we need to know which programme the information refers to. All data will be stored on secure, password-protected cloud servers and will only be accessed by the research team. The results will be used to inform a forthcoming publication and revision of ICAPHE competences.

If you have any questions about the study, you can contact us at office@icaphe.org. If you have concerns about the conduct of the research, you may contact XYZ ethics office using the details provided in the full ethics information sheet.

Consent statement: “I have read and understood the participant information and agree to participate in this research.”