Table 2 presents the distribution of key public health competences in male and female survey participants.
The group has developed guidelines for individuals who need to develop core public health competences.
Table 3 presents the distribution of key public health competences by preferred job position of survey participants.
As different as the core functions are, there is also great variability in the list of public health competences developed all over the world (42).
The skill levels differ for individuals, such as front-line workers versus those in management positions, ranging from those who need to be aware of specific public health competences to those needing proficiency [ 31].
Thus, generalists most likely need a wide range of skills and training in public health competences to address a number of changing and perhaps disparate conditions or issues, while specialists may not.
Public health competences may be defined as a complex set of measurable behaviours made up of knowledge, skills and attitudes that can be shown to predict and measure effective performance (33).
All relevant international organisations and academia agree on the central importance of a modernised teaching concept, based on core public health competences which should lead to the performance level requested by employers in the area of public health and global health.
Applied epidemiology training programmes, also known as field epidemiology training programs (FETP) are designed to build human capacity in health service agencies by providing training in field epidemiology and other public health competences in the context of health service delivery systems [ 18, 21, 22].
The development of public health competence sets logically leads to formalised evaluation and accreditation of training programs.
