The possibility of natural disasters and public health emergencies coupled with the possibility of terrorism clearly support the need to incorporate emergency preparedness and response material into the curricula for every health professional school in the nation.

To date, the focus has been on the education of the existing healthcare workforce. Students' needs differ from those of practitioners in that there is a fundamental difference between educational competencies and occupational competencies. It is also important to recognize that to assure proper preparedness there must be a clear connection between departments of public health and all other healthcare entities. To this end we included public health students in the creation of competencies and have shown that non-clinical practitioners can, and indeed must, be included in this process.

We describe a process and present a list of emergency preparedness core competencies for health care professions and their applicability to Medical, Dental, Nursing and Public Health students. While we have designed this set of competencies using these disciplines, they may be easily adapted to other healthcare disciplines. The only variations would be in the assignment of proficiency levels and the decision of whether or not clinical competencies are appropriate. The core competencies have been divided into the following four categories which represent broad subject areas and the separation of the competencies related to direct patient care:

• – Emergency Management Principles

• – Terrorism and Public Health Emergency Preparedness

• – Public Health Surveillance and Response

• – Patient Care for Disasters, Terrorism and Public Heath Emergencies.