From leadership research to district action: Toward a public health leadership national training agenda: a review of conceptual frameworks and core competencies

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Strong and effective leadership is essential for the success of public health systems. It serves as the driving force that inspires, guides, and empowers individuals to improve the health of their communities and strengthen their organizations. Leadership is not merely supplementary but a core element in tackling the increasingly complex challenges facing public health today. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant weaknesses in our systems for emergency preparedness and response, highlighting just how critical capable leadership is within governmental public health. These challenges are magnified by persistent workforce issues, including knowledge gaps, limited development opportunities, and concerns around long-term sustainability. Further complicating the landscape are rising levels of political polarization and incidents of harassment directed at public health professionals. In response to these pressures and a growing wave of workforce attrition, there is now a heightened national focus on developing the next generation of public health leaders. This development must be intentional and structured, relying on well-designed, competency-based approaches rather than informal or inconsistent methods. Public health leaders must be equipped with the skills to navigate the evolving demands of modern health systems. In 2022, the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) convened an expert panel to develop a national leadership training agenda tailored to the governmental public health workforce. The panel consisted of 15 academic and practice leaders in the United States. Between 2022 and 2024, the panel met regularly to define the essential attributes of public health leadership and determine effective strategies for cultivating them through education and capacity-building efforts. The result of this collaborative effort is the ASPPH Public Health Leadership Competency Mapping and Training Agenda: a foundational framework designed to strengthen capabilities across current and future governmental public health professionals. This article presents that framework, marking an important step toward building a more resilient, competent, and adaptive public health workforce.

Study methods

To guide this initiative, the authors and expert panel pursued three primary objectives: to identify gaps in existing public health leadership models, develop a guiding framework to address those gaps, and create a training agenda tailored to the governmental public health workforce. To achieve the first objective, the team conducted a comprehensive literature review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, focusing on public health education and competency frameworks. To develop the guiding framework, the expert panel systematically analyzed and synthesized existing models, ultimately adapting and expanding the 3P Framework for Social Innovators into a public health-specific model – the 4P Framework of Public Health Leadership. Finally, to develop the training agenda, the team conducted an environmental scan of leadership-related standards, competencies, and job task analyses, which were then coded, categorized, and mapped to the domains of the 4P Framework to produce a streamlined and practice-oriented capacity-building guide.

Limitations

No passage was selected automatically. Inspect the complete source before adopting a practice.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one recurring leadership practice described in the source. Map its participants, incentives and constraints to a district setting, then design a small reversible staff pilot with an accountable owner. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Record implementation fidelity, staff review time, task quality and unintended burdens against a baseline. Use a comparison team where feasible and document alternative explanations before expanding. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Emily M. Burke; Jordan A. Fox; Kaitlin Tager; Sara McDowell; Fawn Phelps; Howard Koh. Toward a public health leadership national training agenda: a review of conceptual frameworks and core competencies. Frontiers in Public Health (2025-08-07). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1630046

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.