Essential core competencies for health policy doctoral graduates

Background: In the health sector, competency-based education focuses on the desired performance characteristics of health professionals through designing and implementing the evidence-based standards, performance indicators and, quality outcomes. This paper aims to explore core competencies required for health policy graduates, aiming to prepare doctoral students for a spectrum of future roles, i.e. academic and non-academic.Methods: The databases including PubMed, Scopus, Google scholar, and SID were searched to identify the required competencies for health policy students worldwide. Students and well-known academics in the field of health policy (from Iran and other countries) were interviewed. This qualitative study was conducted in three phases: a critical review of literature; interviews; and validation of identified competencies through face to face consultations with experts complemented by a survey. We used three methods for data collection: 1) review of the literature; 2) 74 face to face and email-based semi-structured interviews and 3) validating the identified competencies through face to face consultations with qualified experts. Results: We identified five core competencies for health policy doctoral graduates without specific order including research, policy analysis, education, decision making, and communication.Conclusions: As countries are gearing up towards sustainable development goals (SDGs), the role of health policy graduates is crucial paving the pathway towards SDGs on health and well-being. Appropriate and contextually-tailored curriculum is pivotal, we envisage, to foster multi-dimensional competencies that are complementary to the specific disciplines of health policy scholars of future, those who can genuinely serve their health systems towards sustainable health development.