Teaching Public Health Beyond Individual Behavior: Integrating the Social Ecological Model and Structural Competency as a Pedagogical Framework

Public health education has long incorporated individual behavior change as an important component of health promotion; however, individual-level approaches alone may insufficiently address the structural and systemic forces that shape health inequities. As accreditation standards and workforce competencies increasingly prioritize systems thinking, health equity, and policy engagement, educators require pedagogical frameworks that move beyond individual-level explanations of health. This article proposes the intentional integration of the Social Ecological Model (SEM) and structural competency as a complementary pedagogical approach for public health and health promotion education. Drawing on scholarship in multicultural health, systems thinking, and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), this paper articulates how combining SEM and structural competency can support students’ ability to analyze health issues across multiple levels of influence, including interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy contexts. The framework is presented as a teaching approach designed to strengthen learners’ capacity to identify upstream determinants of health, recognize structural drivers of inequity, and connect theory to real-world public health practice. The article describes how this integrated framework can be embedded across foundational, applied, and policy-oriented instruction. Illustrative teaching applications demonstrate how educators can guide students from individual behavior explanations toward structural analysis, ethical reasoning, and systems-level intervention planning. Implications for curriculum design, assessment, and competency alignment are discussed, with particular attention to health promotion and public health education. By positioning SEM and structural competency as complementary pedagogical tools, this paper contributes a practical, equity-centered framework intended to advance teaching and learning in public health education.