CEPH accreditation of stand-alone baccalaureate programs: a preliminary mapping exercise.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief background of quality assurance efforts in health education, provide a brief overview of the new Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) accreditation process for stand-alone baccalaureate public health programs that prepare health education specialists, and describe the experience of two academic programs in reviewing their curricula for coverage of the newly approved CEPH requirements. The University of Alabama and the University of North Carolina Wilmington undertook a curriculum mapping exercise identifying which courses in their programs Introduced, Reinforced, and/or Covered each of the Critical Components Elements identified by CEPH. The mapping process is described, and recommendations for other programs considering accreditation under the newly adopted CEPH standards are provided.

Strengthening quality assurance in health education: recent milestones and future directions.

The health education profession has a lengthy history of efforts to assure the quality of health education professional preparation and practice. These initiatives to improve the value and accountability of health education are not only beneficial to current practitioners and faculty but also to consumers, students, employers, other professional colleagues, and numerous other stakeholders. This article describes the movement during the last decade to further strengthen quality assurance in health education, including current credentialing mechanisms for individuals and academic programs, the efforts of three national accreditation task forces, and the 2006 Third National Congress for Institutions Preparing Health Educators (Dallas II). Post-Dallas II activities related to program accreditation and approval and individual certification are presented as well as future directions for the health education workforce.