Ten Essential Public Health Services

0:57 - Overview of 10 Essential Public Health Services (EPHS)
7:48 - EPHS Framework
The ten essential public health services provide not only a framework but an approach to ensure that your research aligns with the tenets of public health. The de Beaumont Foundation (Sellers and Castrucci) engaged the Public Health National Center for Innovations (Fisher and Kuehnert), a division of the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), to engage as much of the field of public health as possible to consider updating the EPHS. Kaye Bender, who was CEO of PHAB during most of the process, provided critical leadership and facilitation throughout the entire project.
Development and contents of the framework. The original framework was based on available research and resources at the time, but much has changed since 1994, including the process for developing and revising a public health framework.
Paramount to the new process was ensuring that the framework be developed by the field, for the field. Therefore, it was critical to engage the field in first determining whether they believed it was necessary to revise the framework and then ask them how to make it most relevant for today and the future.
Specifically, organizations strategically and fully engaged the public health field through a crowdsourced, field-driven process. They collected input from more than 1,300 practitioners across all areas of public health and at all stages of their careers through real-time polling at meetings and events, an online feedback survey, and informal discussions. This process allowed for more diverse participation than was possible when the framework was initially written and should serve as a template for developing future models and frameworks.
The field’s input was complemented by a taskforce that included experts from federal agencies, national public health organizations, state and local public health agencies, tribes, academia, and nonprofit groups involved in public health issues-some of whom were part of the original 1994 creation.
The Revised 10 Essential Public Health Services
On September 9, 2020, the revised version was formally launched and became available for widespread adoption and implementation. The important, foundational work done in 1994 remains. The updated EPHS still feel familiar, but this revised framework incorporates some key changes, the most significant of which was the choice to center the framework on equity.
Centering Equity
Health disparities existed long before public health professionals even measured health outcomes. The injustice of slavery perpetuated by systemic policies that disproportionately impacted people of color has had a direct and undeniable impact on health. The original EPHS was silent on the critical need for public health to confront health disparities and promote equity. In the revised EPHS, this has changed. Not only has equity been included, but it is also now at the center of our practice. Centering equity means that all public health work must reach toward two aims simultaneously: improving overall health and advancing equity. It is unacceptable to intentionally or unintentionally increase health inequities in the interest of improving health for a subset of the population. The focus on equity is reflected in language changes throughout each of the 10 services.
Sourced from HealthAffairs.org