Strengthen your understanding of important community engagement concepts with a certificate program.

This self-paced certificate course program teaches you about the role community engagement within public health. Upon successful completion, you will earn the distinctive Certificate of Specialized Training - Community Engagement Basic Concepts issued by North Dakota Public Health Training Network.

Topics:

  • Community capacity building and coalition building

  • Communications and worldview

  • Media influence

  • Motivational factors and societal factors

  • Worksite wellness and housing

  • Participatory teaching techniques

  • Public health in disasters

  • Community health workers and integration

Components:

  • Fifteen on-demand lecture sessions (narrated PowerPoint videos) for nearly 9 hours of instruction

  • 514 presentation slides with accompanying lecture transcript for each session

  • Quizzes after each session to test your understanding

  • 15 short-essay questions to help you apply what you’ve learned about community engagement

  • 24.0 Certified Public Health (CPH) continuing education (recertification) credits

  • See more details

Price: $185 $125

  • Risk-free with our 7-day money back guarantee

  • Following your purchase, we will email you (within 24 hours) instructions and registration/access codes.

Access:

This course is delivered through TRAIN, the Public Health Foundation’s Learning Network.

You have six months to complete all sessions, pass all post-assessments, and turn in all written assignments. The estimated time requirement is 25-35 hours.

Instructor:

Dr. Terry Dwelle is the former North Dakota State Health Officer and the Founder and President of North Dakota Public Health Training Network. He has over 40 years of clinical and public health experience in the United States, Eastern Europe, Latin and South America, and Central and East Africa.



Course Syllabus:

CLICK HERE to view session titles and learning objectives

1) COURSE INSTRUCTOR INTRODUCTION. Meet Dr. Terry Dwelle, the creator of our Community Engagement Basic Concepts specialized certificate course.

2) PUBLIC HEALTH AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT - INTRODUCTION. Understand the importance of community engagement in changing risky behaviors. Understand the importance of various kinds of data and analysis in developing strategies to address risky behaviors. Understand the role of public health in changing risky behaviors.

3) COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND CAPACITY BUILDING - BASIC CONCEPTS. Understand basic attributes of successful public health programs. Understand the difference between community engagement and community coercion. Understand the relationship of community engagement to process, development and external funding. Define community.

4) COMMUNICATIONS MODEL. Understand culture shock and how it relates to public health messaging. Understand the difference between messaging and transfer of meaning. Discuss the basic concepts of a communications model. Understand the importance of being respondent oriented. Discuss the role of contextualization in messaging. Review attributes of successful behavior change programs. Understand how Maslow’s pyramid relates to community message receptivity.

5) INTRODUCTION TO WORLDVIEW AND PUBLIC HEALTH. Understand how worldview impacts cultural distance. Understand that a majority of people have strong supernatural beliefs that can be used to change risky behaviors. Describe the basic beliefs of naturalism, monotheism, tribal cultures, monism, and traditional Chinese cultures. Understand the benefits and challenges of the concept of primary prevention with different cultural worldviews. Review a few examples of how religiosity impacts healthy behavior. Review key results of a SWOT survey of faith-based leaders. Describe the importance of horizontal communicators. Discuss the importance of addressing perceived needs in faith-based engagement. Discuss the importance of first dealing with spiritual fatalism before engagement. Review leadership skills for faith-based engagement.

6) REPORT 1. Answer a series of short-answer questions on key topics addressed in sessions 2-5.

7) CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS, COGNITION AND LANGUAGE. Describe the process of developing meaning in message respondents. Explain how meaning transfer relates to the communications model. Recognize the importance of the seven dimensions of cultural distance in cross-cultural communications. Describe the tri-systemic model of cognition and how that model applies to public health communications. Demonstrate the importance of stories for transmitting meaning in relationship cultures. Describe the breadth of worldwide languages and dialects. Describe the role of languages. Describe three basic steps to overcome language barriers. Explain the importance of horizontal communicators in effective community messaging. Briefly explain the importance of the semantic differential and language impact on culture.

8) MEDIA INFLUENCES. Review the communications model including the seven dimensions of cultural distance. Discuss the importance of research to identify the best media channels and media message forms for a community. Discuss the importance of working with organizations in a community engagement process. Discuss the importance of horizontal communicators in community engagement and decreasing cultural distance. Review urban and rural attributes and how they relate to community engagement and messaging strategies. Review the eight general messaging hypotheses. Review the four printed mass media suggestions. Review two examples of media research, their findings and how they relate to public health media strategies. Review eight current social media trends and their public health considerations. Briefly discuss the role of mass media meetings and small group dialogue groups and their potential application to public health messaging. Review the basic concepts of message filters.

9) MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS AND DECISION MAKING. Review the communications model and the seven dimensions of cultural distance. Discuss the importance of individuals in initiating cultural change. Discuss common barriers and stimulants for change. Review major factors that influence the process of community decision making. Review the attributes of the four major life orientations. Discuss the five appeals to change. Review decisive and indecisive cultures. Review Prochaska’s stages of change model.

10) NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS. Define non-verbal communications. Discuss how non-verbal communications relate to the 7 dimensions of cultural distance. Review the non-verbal communications model. Discuss high and low context cultures. Review the visual, paralanguage, haptic, chronemic, oculesic and written text categories of nonverbal messaging.

11) CULTURAL DISTANCE AND SOCIETAL FACTORS. Review the cross-cultural communications model. Discuss approaches to decrease cultural distance. Discuss the link between socialization and enculturation. Review the definition and associated attributes of community. Review the five major functions of a community. Review the link between the social determinants of health and community functions. Discuss the attributes of dysfunctional communities. Discuss the important role of the built environment on community socialization. Review the concepts of class, status and roles and vertical and horizontal communicators in community engagement. Discuss the concepts of foreignness and marginalization in community engagement. Briefly review the role of coalitions in the community engagement process.

12) REPORT 2. Answer a series of short-answer questions on key topics addressed in sessions 7-11.

13) CONCEPTS IN WORKSITE WELLNESS. Review the negative impacts of poor employee health on the productivity of businesses. Understand the importance of absenteeism and presenteeism on the business bottom line. Review the impact of worksite wellness programs on business performance and healthcare costs. Understand the role of the integration of public health and primary care in a worksite wellness program. Review the potential role for public health in facilitating worksite wellness.

14) LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT PARTICIPATORY TECHNIQUES. Review the basic LePSA(S) process. Discuss how SMART criteria relate to LePSA(S) action planning. Discuss basic concepts of supernatural beliefs and how they relate to changing risky behaviors. Review the concepts of silence and proxemics in the LePSA(S) group process. Briefly introduce Open Space Technology.

15) COALITION BUILDING CONCEPTS. Review how coalition building relates to the community engagement continuum. Review key team building, boundary spanning, and community engagement concepts as they apply to coalition building. Discuss how coalition building is related integration. Discuss the importance of cultural competence for effective coalition building. Review how to build coalition cohesion. Review the 6 attributes of coalition effectiveness. Discuss how coalition building relates to the 10 essential public health services.

16) PUBLIC HEALTH AND DISASTERS. Understand the difference between relief and development. Be able to describe the 4 phases of disasters. List the role of public health in each or the 4 phases of disasters. Describe the public health response in the emergency and relief phase of disasters. Understand the myths and realities of disasters. Understand the important role of the incident command system and incident commander in effective disaster response. Be able to list the general duration of each phase of the disaster cycle. Describe the relationship of community engagement and resilience. Describe the 5 portions of resilience based assessment.

17) PUBLIC HEALTH AND HOUSING. Define “Health.” Discuss the importance of adequate housing for community engagement. Understand that investment in resource-poor communities improves health. Understand the impacts of poor housing on health. Understand the potential roles for public health in housing issues.

18) COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS AND INTEGRATION. Review the attributes of Community Health Workers. Discuss the activities of Community Health Workers. Review common outcomes and impacts of Community Health Worker activities. Discuss basic public health concepts of changing risky behaviors, integration, class, status, roles, horizontal and vertical communications and levels of message identification as it relates to community health workers. Discuss the current status of community health worker certification in the United States.

19) REPORT 3. Answer a series of short-answer questions on key topics addressed in sessions 13-18.

 

Who this course is for:

This training material provides you with a basic understanding of community engagement within public health practice. It is intended for the public health workforce, and for students in public health or medical academic programs.

The North Dakota Public Health Training Network (NDPHTN) offers on-demand training in public health leadership, management, and community engagement to the public health workforce and academic institutions. (6).png

public health professionals

Enroll in this course for your own professional improvement and to earn CPH contact hours.

The North Dakota Public Health Training Network (NDPHTN) offers on-demand training in public health leadership, management, and community engagement to the public health workforce and academic institutions. (7).png

local and state health departments

Use this material to address workforce development needs and provide your staff members with training opportunities.

The North Dakota Public Health Training Network (NDPHTN) offers on-demand training in public health leadership, management, and community engagement to the public health workforce and academic institutions. (8).png

academic programs*

Use this curricula to equip your students with the competencies to translate their technical knowledge into effective day-to-day practice.

*Contract required. Contact us to discuss options.


Excellent presentation of the concepts with good examples. I especially liked the Lakota story-telling example.
— Student in the "Cross-Cultural Communications" module
This presentation is necessary for all those who engage cultures different from their own.
— Student in the "Non-Verbal Communications" module

Continuing education credit: 24.0

This curricula is approved by the National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE) for Certified Public Health (CPH) continuing education (recertification) credit.

 

Certificate of Specialized Training:

After you successfully complete all lecture sessions in this course, pass all post-assessments, and submit your written assignments for a satisfactory rating, you will earn the distinctive Certificate of Specialized Training - Community Engagement Basic Concepts issued by North Dakota Public Health Training Network.

This assessment-based certificate acknowledges that you successfully learned the course objectives and demonstrated your understanding of the subject matter through a final project.

 

Purchase course:

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Audit - Price Varies


Lectures Only

15 community engagement lectures

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x

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Certificate Course - $125
The Full Experience

15 community engagement lectures

514 presentation slides with speaker notes

Transcript of 9 hours of lecture audio

Written Reports | 15 short-essay questions

15 Certificates of Completion (Sessions)

Certificate of Specialized Training (Course)

 
  • This option is for those who only want to take the class lectures.

    No certificates are included, and there are no written assignments. Study aids, such as the slides with the accompanying lecture transcripts, are also not included.

    Note: You will not earn the Certificate of Specialized Training. However, a Certificate of Completion can be purchased for each class you successfully complete.

  • With this option, you end up with the distinctive Certificate of Specialized Training in Community Engagement Basic Concepts, along with a Certificate of Completion for each of the 15 modules.

    Course requirements include listening to the lectures, taking quizzes, and completing three short-answer written reports to demonstrate your understanding of the material and how it applies to the practice of public health. In other words, it takes time and effort to earn the Certificate of Specialized Training in Community Engagement Basic Concepts — making this accomplishment something for you to be proud of.

    As a bonus for our certificate students, you also get the lecture slides with the accompanying lecture audio transcript for each of these classes. This is a valuable go-to resource both during and after the course.

Details:

Click on the items below to learn more about what’s included with each option.

+ 15 Community Engagement Lectures (Narrated PowerPoint Videos) | Audit, Standard

View and listen to nearly 9 hours of community engagement lectures. Session titles include:

- (L004-C) Public Health and Community Engagement - Introduction
- (L005-C) Community Engagement and Capacity Building - Basic Concepts
- (L025-C) Communications Model
- (L027-C) Introduction to Worldview and Public Health
- (CE002-C) Cross-Cultural Communications, Cognition, and Language
- (CE005-C) Media Influences
- (CE006-C) Motivational Factors and Decision Making
- (CE003-C) Non-Verbal Communications
- (CE004-C) Cultural Distance and Societal Factors
- (L023-C) Concepts in Worksite Wellness
- (L030-C) Leadership and Management Participatory Techniques - LePSA(S)
- (L026-C) Coalition Building Concepts
- (L024-C) Public Health and Disasters
- (L028-C) Public Health and Housing
- (CE007-C) Community Health Workers and Integration

+ 15 Certificates of Completion (Sessions) | Standard

All certificates for completing each of the 15 individual sessions are included ($75 value @ $5 each).

+ Certificate of Specialized Training - Community Engagement Basic Concepts (Course) | Standard

After you successfully complete all course components — by passing all Post-Assessments and submitting your written assignments for a satisfactory review — you will earn the distinctive Certificate of Specialized Training in Community Engagement Basic Concepts.

+ Written Reports | Standard

The written report assignments give you the opportunity to synthesize and express what you learned. For this course, you will answer a total of 15 short essay questions (100-250 words each) covering key points in the lectures. Examples of questions include "How does community engagement relate to community capacity building?" and "What are key concepts a public health leader can use to engage faith-based groups?"

+ PDF of Lecture Slides | Standard

A lot of material is covered in these 15 community engagement health lectures — coming to 514 slides, in fact! As part of your course registration, you will receive PDFs of the lecture slides with the corresponding audio transcript.

+ Transcript of Lecture Audio | Standard

Along with each slide, you get the word-for-word transcription of nearly 9 hours of training lectures — a big time-saver when it comes to note taking, and a useful go-to resource long after the class.