Enhancing the Public Health Workforce: Fostering Linkages between Community Colleges and the Health Education Profession

Community colleges provide an important incubator for health education specialists who may pursue their foundational courses in a two-year degree setting, with an opportunity to articulate to a four-year degree program in health education.  Community colleges also have strong connections to the communities they serve, a foundational element shared with health education.  As part of The Framing the Future: The Second 100 Years of Public Health Task Force, the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) developed three prototype curricular outlines featuring an introduction to health education, accessing and analyzing health information, and advocacy and leadership in public health (a service-learning course).  

Since 2014, SOPHE disseminated the course outlines to the field via four webinars, sponsored in part with grant funding by the National Library of Medicine; delivered four presentations at SOPHE, APHA, and League for Innovation in Community College annual conferences; and featured guest speakers on the initiative at two SOPHE board meetings.  The March 2016 issue of SOPHE’s journal Pedagogy in Health Promotion: The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, is entirely devoted to the community colleges initiative with 14 articles, including a sample articulation template. Moving forward, SOPHE is working with the League to link some 90 SOPHE members who have volunteered to work with local community colleges and is pursuing additional funding opportunities.