Creating a regulated health promotion workforce in Australia

Health Promotion Practitioners in Australia are employed in a variety of health, education, research and other settings. However, the health promotion workforce is not regulated and agreed tertiary qualifications and/or practitioner competencies are not a requirement for employment. Regulation using an agreed set of competencies to register practitioners, provides a mechanism to protect community and industry interests, ensuring practitioners have met minimum qualifications and can demonstrate ongoing fitness to practice. In 2016 the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA), successfully applied to the International Union for Health Promotion Education (IUHPE) to become the Australian National Accreditation Organisation (NAO) for the IUHPE Health Promotion Accreditation System. This provides an opportunity for Australia to be involved in an internationally researched and developed system that provides a framework for registration of Health Promotion Practitioners and accreditation of health promotion courses. Registration of Health Promotion Practitioners will be for three years and applicants will be required to provide evidence of attainment against a comprehensive list of health promotion competencies. Re-registration will require evidence of undertaking 75 hours or more professional development over the three year registration period. This presentation will describe the benefits of the System for individual practitioners, the broader public health workforce and employers; the proposed governance structure for AHPA fulfilling the NAO role; the Health Promotion Practitioner Registration and Re-registration process (including the newly developed on-line application system).