Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System: Using SOC to help define and count public health professionals

Enumeration of the public health professions has been a continuing challenge for the public health field. Studies have attempted to provide methods that give an approximation of various selected public health disciplines, but getting a handle on the full range of public health professions continues to confound the field. An accurate enumeration of the public health professions is important to determine what it will take to address the needs for doing the job of public health so that federal resources for supporting public health professionals can be better and more effectively targeted. Along with enumerating public health professionals, it is critical that there is agreed upon definitions of essential functions within the positions described as public health professions. A biostatistician in California should have the same essential functions as a biostatistician in Maine. So how do we capture such comparative functions? The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system used by the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics is a federal attempt at this effort for all occupations being classified. The SOC system was developed in response to a growing need for a universal occupational classification system. Such a system would allow government agencies and private industry to produce comparable data. It is designed to cover all occupations in which work is preformed for pay or profit, reflecting the current occupational structure in the United States.