Continued Professional Development

Public Health Services and Projects

In public health, the overall aim of continuing professional development is to ensure that those who work in the field develop and maintain the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes to practise effectively and work towards improving the health of the population. CPD is a professional obligation for all public health professionals. Three categories of public health workers are widely accepted as constituting the public health workforce:

Public Health specialists: consultants in public health and specialists in public health who work at a strategic or senior management level or at a senior level of scientific expertise to influence the health of the whole population or of a selected community.
Public health practitioners: those who spend a major part, or all, of their time in public health practice e.g. public health information analyst, oral health promoter, smoking cessation coordinator, health visitor etc.
Wider public health: most people, including managers, have a role in health improvement and reducing health inequalities although they may not recognise this, including: teachers, social workers, local business leaders, transport engineers, town planners, housing officers, regeneration managers and so on.

Please see the link below to the Oxford School of Public Health and the links to number of learning opportunities. They provide an insight into the range of courses available to support public health development. It is intended as a reference document only. Signposting to a course from this document does not imply that financial support to attend one of these courses will be made available to you. This is not a definitive directory of all the courses which are available – it is constantly being developed and updated.