Assessing competencies for public health emergency legal preparedness.

journal of law, medicine & ethics Introduction Among the many components of legal preparedness for public health emergencies is the assurance that the public health workforce and its private sector partners are competent to use the law to facilitate the performance of essential public health services and functions.1 This is a significant challenge. Multiple categories of emergencies, stemming from natural disasters to emerging infectious diseases, confront public health practitioners.2 Interpreting, assessing, and applying legal principles during emergencies are complicated by the changing legal environment and differences in governmental organization of emergency management functions.3 While law and legal competencies are essential to routine public health practices, once government declares a state of public health emergency or disaster, the legal landscape changes.4 Typical legal responses to protect the public’s health may no longer be the norm. Public health practitioners, legal counsel, health care partners, and others need to be able to assess changing laws and policies and apply them in real-time. To do so, they must be competent in their understanding and use of the law during public health emergencies. In the context of public health systems, competencies may be defined as a complex combination of knowledge, skills, and abilities demonstrated by members of an organization that are critical to the effective and efficient function of the organization.5 Competency statements describe specific activities that individuals are able to do or perform depending on their respective roles, responsibilities, and qualifications.6 Competency resources have been developed for a full range of public health services,7 including emergency response8 and legal preparedness.9 In this article we describe the modern development of competencies in public health law, ethics, and policy, providing numerous examples of types of competency tools and materials. We further discuss existing and emerging actors within the public and private sectors for whom legal competencies in public health emergency preparedness are essential. Through these examinations, we analyze the current status of legal competencies for public health emergency preparedness and identify various gaps to be addressed in improving competencies.