Association of State and Territorial Directors of Health Promotion and Public Health Education

The Directors of Health Promotion and Education (DHPE) presents Systems Change for Health formerly known as Shaping Policy for HealthTM. This was developed recognizing that health problems are influenced by policies and environments that either sustain healthy behaviors or fail to support them. Major public health problems will not be solved solely by individual actions, but by coming together to forge a society where healthy choices are easy and popular. As a practitioners' organization, DHPE has long recognized that health policy and systems change are essential to our work if we want to improve the health of all. Recommendations from our 2001 report Policy and Environmental Change: New Directions for Public Health led DHPE to work with Carolyn Crump, PhD, and James Emery, MPH, of the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health (UNC) to identify the professional competencies public health workers need to succeed in creating policy, systems, and environmental changes that promote health. DHPE's Systems Change for Health curriculum was developed by our partners at UNC to address those competencies. Comprehensive curriculum uses a trans disciplinary approach incorporating theories, methods, tools and case evidence from public health, public policy, public administration and urban planning to teach the concepts of effective policy change and strengthen practitioners' skills and competencies.. The competencies learned are foundational and adaptable across public health issues such as obesity, tobacco, injury control, heart disease and stroke prevention.