The credentialing of a population-based health profession: lessons learned from health education certification.

This article summarizes research and issues related to health education certification. Health education's experience with certification provides valuable insight for other public health professions because of the credential's population-based emphasis, its recent development, and its broadly defined cross-cutting skill set. Although data are still emerging on the outcomes of health education certification, most studies indicate that it has had a positive impact across multiple dimensions. Critical to this success has been providing profession-wide opportunities for input, communicating with key stakeholders, establishing an independent credentialing agency, and basing the credential on scientifically and legally defensible competencies that are linked to job responsibilities.