Chiropractic educational programs include content related to topics broadly characterized under the heading of “public health”. That content is driven, at least to some degree, by common educational accreditation requirements and licensing board test plans, particularly in the United States. However, despite those external drivers, significant disparity exists between chiropractic programs regarding the content and delivery of public health topics. Attempts have been made to identify standardized public health competencies across chiropractic programs, however these have had little impact on chiropractic curricula to date.
The workshop provided an overview of the methods and outcomes of a recent collaborative consensus project that identified sixteen core public health competencies in four domains for chiropractic programs. Workshop participants interactively engaged in assessment of the relevance and prioritization of those competencies in the context of the ongoing pandemic. Additionally, participants explored the creation of public health learning objectives for their own programs. Through engagement in the workshop, participants gained 1. Awareness of the relevance of public health competencies for the chiropractic profession; 2. Fluency in articulating public health competencies germane to chiropractic practitioners; and 3. Ability to develop public health learning objectives for their own programs.