Last data update: Jan 27, 2025. (Total: 48650 publications since 2009)
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Health education workforce: Opportunities and challenges
Bruening RA , Coronado F , Auld ME , Benenson G , Simone PM . Prev Chronic Dis 2018 15 E89 Public health is facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. Health departments face shifts from less clinical service delivery to increased population-based services to address the growing burden of chronic diseases (eg, obesity prevention, tobacco and drug use prevention) and new responsibilities to collaborate with other sectors in conducting community needs assessments and data sharing (1–3). State and local health departments continue to be challenged by health policy changes, reduced budgets, and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff (2). These challenges need to be met with a public health workforce of adequate size, composition, distribution, and skills. Formally trained health educators are an important but often underutilized part of the workforce needed to meet such challenges. Although various health workers inform the public, many employers are unaware of the professional training and roles of health educators (4). Health educators (also referred to as health education specialists) address chronic and other conditions by applying their competencies to the design and execution of behavioral health and policy or systems interventions (4). This essay highlights how the skill sets of health educators can address current and future public health challenges, the need for improved health educator workforce data, and a call to action for various stakeholders to optimally deploy health educators to improve the public’s health. |
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