Professional competencies for health promotion: an unknown competence and a missed opportunity for public health in southern Sweden!

Introduction
Health promotion expertise have been graduating with a bachelor’s degree, since the beginning of 2000 in southern Sweden, as a response to various challenges hindering a positive development of social sustainability and public health. The competencies need to be put into practice for a possible positive effect, but alumni have expressed challenges in getting a job in health promotion. Surveys have therefore been used to explore the experiences of alumni regularly.

Material and methods
A survey, with standardized and open-ended questions, was sent to all alumni three years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in health promotion and education. The questionnaire focused on current employment, experiences of working life and education. The response rate was 53% (n=19), 89% were female, 95% had Swedish as first language and age varied between 26-51 years.

Results
89% of the participants had an employment and 33% worked in municipality, 33% in private sector, 21% in government service and 11% on regional level. The findings showed that 42% had a qualified employment in health promotion and 21% had a qualified employment without focus on health promotion.

The alumni had generally a positive experience from their education which had contributed to their personal and professional development. Most of them felt proud of their education, recommended the university, and felt being well prepared for health promotion work in practice. The findings also show, however, alumni having difficulties navigating the labor market, and receiving an employment in health promotion. Alumni expressed how employers lacked knowledge and awareness of their competencies and preferred well-known competencies like social workers or nurses.

Conclusions
The findings indicate that health promotion professionals are somewhat used but an underused competence in southern Sweden. These results can be related to a lack of legislation and structure regarding health promotion in practice, which relates to the traditional organization of the Swedish welfare system, and a lack of knowledge and awareness of health promotion as professional competencies for the labor market. Multiple efforts are therefore called for if health promotion is to be a professionally driven, systematic and sustainable resource for public health in the region.