Certification Portal Certification & Public Health
Certification is Critical to the Public Health Profession
Public health has a profound impact on the health and well-being of people and communities. Advances in sanitation, vaccination, disease prevention and surveillance, safer environments, and public health policy have transformed how long and how well people live. Yet the work of public health, and the professionals behind it, can be difficult to see and is too often underrecognized until a crisis brings it into focus.
Public health is also uniquely multidisciplinary. Professionals enter the field through many educational pathways and work across countless roles, settings, and areas of expertise. That diversity is one of public health’s greatest strengths, but it also makes a shared professional identity especially important.
NBPHE was founded on the belief that certification can help strengthen that identity. By establishing nationally recognized standards for public health knowledge and practice, certification creates common ground across the workforce while recognizing the distinct expertise professionals bring to the field. It helps define public health as a profession in its own right, one focused on improving health at the population and community level.
Today, NBPHE carries that vision forward through certifications that recognize both broad public health knowledge and specialized areas of practice. Across those credentials, the purpose remains the same: to advance professional standards, support lifelong learning, strengthen the public health workforce, and build trust in the professionals who serve our communities.
The Movement to Credential Public Health
In June 2000, Sommer and Akhter penned the editorial It’s Time We Became a Profession, describing the need to align the public health profession around core competencies and values shared by public health professionals. They outlined the vision of a task force assembled by the American Public Health Association and the Association of Schools of Public Health to explore credentialing for the public health workforce.
“Once it is clear that public health is a defined and organized profession, visibility, respect, and compensation of the public health workforce should all increase. So should the profession’s impact on policy and legislation, in a voice more audible and coherent than ever before.”
Sommer and Akhter, 2000
Given the multidisciplinary nature of public health, creating a credentialing system for the profession was an ambitious undertaking. The Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) and the American Public Health Association (APHA) created the APHA/ASPH Task Force on Public Health Workforce Credentialing. With encouragement from both organizations’ executive boards, the task force expanded its engagement with stakeholders and became the Steering Committee on Public Health Workforce Credentialing. Planning discussions included ASPH, APTR, APHA, ASTHO, and NACCHO.
In 2005, NBPHE was established as an independent organization dedicated to certification for the public health profession.
What Certification Brings to Public Health
Shared Standards
Certification establishes recognized standards and competence across a diverse workforce, creating a common body of knowledge across the profession
Public Trust
Independent certification provides assurance that certified professionals have demonstrated the knowledge and skills expected within their area of practice.
Professional Growth
Certification encourages professionals to continue learning and stay current as public health knowledge, practice, and priorities evolve.
Employer Confidence
Certification gives employers an independent measure of demonstrated knowledge and competence to support hiring, workforce development, and investment in employees.
Workforce Recognition
Credentials provide a visible way to recognize professional knowledge, skills, and commitment.
A Stronger Profession
Certification strengthens professional identity and helps elevate the visibility and credibility of public health.
Advancing Public Health Through Certification
NBPHE was created to credential the public health workforce. Today, that work extends across a growing portfolio of certifications designed to recognize broad public health knowledge as well as expertise in specialized areas of practice.
Certified in
Public Health
Comprehensive knowledge and skills for public health professionals.
Certified in
Disease Intervention
Recognizing professionals on the front lines of infectious disease.
Certified in Public Health Nursing
Specialized expertise for nurses practicing in public health.
Certified in Public Health Essentials
Essential public health knowledge and skills for today’s workforce.
Public health professionals must stay at the forefront of their field. This involves understanding interactions between specialized areas, learning new disaster response strategies, and staying ahead of threats. Public health certification helps public health professionals achieve these goals.
Allison Foster, President, NBPHE
