Competency cross-walking: Taking the first step toward providing comprehensive competency-based education for the public health workforce in South Carolina

Providing competency-based education for the public health workforce can be challenging. Although there is literature concerning individual discipline areas, little has been documented concerning using Council on Linkages Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals across multiple disciplines of a Health Services (HS) branch of a state health department. In particular, little literature was located that described the process of how to begin using the competencies.

This study's purpose is to describe the competency crosswalking process the South Carolina Public Health Training Center (SCPHTC) at the University of South Carolina used in collaboration with the SC Department of Health and Environmental Quality (SCDHEC); this was part of a statewide workforce development project. Crosswalking was used to find commonality between eleven specific HS disciplines' competencies and Core competencies.

The process began by obtaining competencies from discipline directors. Core Competencies consist of three Tiers, however, administrative support personnel do not seem to fit into the 3 existing tiers, leaving out about 800 of the 2400 SCDHEC HS personnel that comprise HS. (HS is about 75% of SCDHEC.) To address this, Tier 1 was subdivided into Tier 1A and 1B. Crosswalking began with three SCPHTC Workforce Development team members conducting the initial competency matching for the 11 disciplines. This was entered into a matrix, followed by a vetting process by SCDHEC discipline teams.

The crosswalk results will lay the foundation for a statewide workforce assessment which will be used to revise existing and develop new competency-based educational programs for SC's public health workforce.