The Roles and Professional Competencies of Health Education Specialists in Public Health Organizations

Objectives: This study was performed to suggest the roles and professional competencies of health education specialists to improve the efficacy of health promotion activities in public health organizations. Results and Conclusion: Based on the advanced cases of utilizing health education specialists in international and domestic public health organizations, five key roles of health education specialists were proposed. They included developing and applying behavior change strategies necessary to begin and maintain health behavior practices, analysing the needs of the priority population in a systematic way, organizing multiple health behavior change programs and multilevel intervention programs, and doing research on health determinants and scientific evidence of health promotion programs, In order to improve the quality of health promotion services in public health organizations, professional competencies of health education specialist should be developed and strengthened.