Identifying global health competencies to prepare 21st century global health professionals: report from the global health competency subcommittee of the consortium of universities for global health.

As universities increase their focus on global health-related professional education, the need for specific competencies and outcomes to guide curriculum development is urgent. To address this need, the chair of the Education Committee of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) appointed a Subcommittee to determine if there is a need for broad global health core competencies applicable across disciplines, and if so, what those competencies should be. Based on that work, this paper (a) discusses the benefits of developing interprofessional and discipline-specific global health competencies; (b) highlights themes that emerged from a preliminary review of existing related literature; and (c) reviews the process used to identify two levels of interprofessional global health competencies.