ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1583383
This article is part of the Research TopicCatalyzing Public Health Leadership Research, Practice, Education, and TrainingView all 8 articles
Leadership Tasks in Public Health: -Findings from the National Board of Public Health Examiners' Job Task Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- 2School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
- 3School of Health Sciences, Stockton University, Galloway, NJ, United States
- 4Meazure Learning Inc, Minneapolis, MN, United States
- 5National Board of Public Health Examiners, Washington DC, United States
- 6Health Sciences and Biochemistry, Nutrition, & Health Promotion, Mississippi State University, Starville, United States
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Introduction: Public health leadership plays a crucial role in shaping effective health policies and practices. The National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE) conducts a job task analysis (JTA) survey every 5-7 years to update the Certified in Public Health (CPH) examination. The objective of this study is to examine the JTA findings on leadership tasks in public health practice. Methods: In April 2022, through the collaboration of expert panels and a validation survey, 103 tasks organized into ten domains were established for the JTA survey. The JTA survey was distributed online to current public health professionals. Across the tasks in the ten domains,respondents were asked about frequency (Scale of 1-6; how often they performed this task) and criticality (Scale of 1-5; how important this task was to their job).Results: A total of 2,091 public health professionals responded to at least 82 of the 103 tasks (80%) and were included in the analysis. Approximately 86% of respondents worked in the United States and 41% had earned their CPH credential. Average frequency ratings ranged from 2.38 to 5.58, indicating that task ratings ranged from being performed never performed, every few years to daily. Average criticality ratings ranged from 2.46 to 4.64, indicating that task ratings ranged from not important to critically important. Specific to leadership, it was found that the 'leadership' domain ranked 2 nd highest for both frequency and criticality.Our findings suggest that leadership-focused development as part of academic public health programs and continuing education for the workforce is essential. Future research may examine how individuals perform on the leadership domain of the CPH exam across multiple characteristics to better inform additional workforce development strategies.
Keywords: Public Health, Leadership, competency, Job task analysis, Work force
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dubois, Dissen, Bowen, Kurz, Foster and Buys. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cerina Dubois, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21205, Maryland, United States
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