Public Health Practitioners’ Health Education Competencies in Sub-District Health Promoting Hospitals

Abstract

Public health practitioners’ health education competencies in sub-district health pro-moting hospitals are crucial to organizational performance achievement. This cross-sectional survey research aimed to study the levels of health education competency among public health practitioners and relationships between the studied factors and overall health education competency. The 214 samples were selected using multistage sampling. An online self-administrative questionnaire via google forms was used for data collection. Bivariate analysis was performed using Point-Biserial, Pearson’s Product-Moment, and Eta correlations. The overall self-assessment results on health education competencies showed more than half of the samples (55 percent) were at a level of needs improvement. Among the six domains of competency, evaluation and research, and advocacy for healthy public policy were the most identified as domains that need to improve. The results of the bivariate analysis found that age, motivation to work health education, and organization policy were significantly correlated with the overall health education competency (p<0.05). The findings signify the essence of health education competency improvement among public health practitioners. The implementation should be highlighted on building motivation for health education working and establishing health education competency-based capacity building system and mecha-nism, which integrates into existing capacity development plans.