The Case for School Health Educators Becoming Certified Health Education Specialists

Descriptive Study of Community Health Education Jobs in the U.S.A., May – December 1998

“…The Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) (NCHEC, 2000) credential was designed to meet the goal of standardizing the minimum level of professional competence. However, the certification is not required in nearly all US states, although there are many benefits derived from the credentialing of school health educators (Girvan & Kearns, 1993). This study also found that only small percentage of employers (8.4%) required or preferred the community health educator applicant to possess the CHES certification.…”

“…It is generally accepted in health education that an individual who possesses a baccalaureate degree in a health education major meets the minimum educational requirement of the profession. In addition to a college degree and appropriate major, certification as a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) (NCHEC, 1996) is optional, although the creation of the certification was meant to further the development of the profession by creating standards of practice, and viewed as an essential job qualification (Cleary, 1995;Girvan & Kearns, 1993;Hager, 1997;Mail, 1994;Ricketts, 2000). There still exists, however, controversy over the utility of the CHES certification in the workplace (Butler, 1997).…”

A Critical Analysis of the CHES Credentialing Issue: Bridging the Gap between Vision and Outcomes

“…These concerns are countered by those who believe individual credentialing eventually will benefit health educators in all settings (#3, Luebke &Bohnenblust, 1994;English & Videto, 1997). Many concur that certified individuals will be at an employment advantage in community and public health arenas (Alperin & Miner, 1993;Cortese, 1990;Girvan & Kearns, 1993;Livingood, 1989). Should the shift continue as predicted from 10-calized school and work site health education programs to more broad-based community efforts (English & Videto, 1997), CHES-certifiedschool healtheducators will be more capable of participating in joint school-community health education efforts and moving into community health employment (Cleary & Birch, 1995;Luebke & Bohnenblust, 1994).…”

“…Some predict that adding certification requirements to work settings where other certificationdicenses and priorities already exist will reduce the number of settings in which health education is provided (#7, Girvan & Kearns, 1993;Kreuter, 1992). Because public school administrators view state teacher certification as evidence of competency, it is feared that school health educators may be overly burdened with certification requirements not valued by their employers.…”

“…To document a direct effect empirical studies would need to verify that CHES are more effectively involved in, for example, school-community joint efforts and more readily cross over from one work setting to another than do non-CHES. Tracking CHES from job to job will become more likely with time and increased work-setting crossovers (Cleary&Birch, 1995;Eddyetal., 1996;Girvan & Kearns, 1993).…”