Denver Public Health (DPH) is an innovative, nationally recognized public health department located in Denver, Colorado. Denver’s estimated population of 704,621 is rapidly growing and diverse; 54% identify as White, 30% Hispanic, 10% Black, and 4% Asian (2017 census estimates). DPH collaborates with partners to inform, educate, offer services, and promote policy change to make Denver a healthy community for all people. DPH issues birth and death certificates; monitors and creates reports about the health of Denver; promotes data sharing to improve Denver’s capacity to assess disease, conditions, and behaviors; trains the next generation of public health professionals; and responds to disease outbreaks and other health emergencies. With many partners, DPH supports policy and systems change, promotes healthy behaviors, and prevents health problems, such as unintentional injuries, tobacco-related illnesses, and obesity. The department also provides specialty clinical services to the most vulnerable community members in the following areas: STD, family planning, routine and travel immunizations, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS. More information is available online at www.denverpublichealth.org. A changing public health landscape and commitment to improving health equity requires a workforce that is competent across varying skillsets and an organization that is committed to personal and departmental professional development. The Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals (Core Competencies), developed by the Council on Linkages between Academia and Public Health Practice (Council on Linkages), can provide a meaningful baseline to public health agencies assessing workforce development needs. While the current Core Competencies are the result of more than two decades of work by the Council on Linkages, consistent feedback to the Public Health Foundation (PHF) is that local and state health departments need assistance in operationalizing the competencies and making them relevant to their staff. The impact of practice resulting from DPH’s approach to the Core Competencies is a replicable survey process that can guide a health department’s efforts in ensuring their workforce is competent and trained to address contemporary public health issues; DPH’s roadmap for survey creation and workforce development planning can benefit other public health agencies that struggle to meaningfully use the Core Competencies. DPH’s work to adopt the Core Competencies began in 2013 when the department made the decision to pursue public health accreditation. DPH’s Workforce Development Committee (WFD Committee), a diverse group of staff representing varying program areas and positions, led the department through two years of survey preparation activities before the survey launched for the first time; notable milestones included: 1) contracting with the PHF to create staff organizational groups that would guide the paring down of the Core Competencies (December 2014), 2) DPH staff participating in conversations with the PHF to select competencies specific to their job function (February 2015), 3) competencies were revised, when appropriate, to increase staff comprehension (April 2016), 4) DPH launched its first annual Core Competency Survey (June 2016), 5) workforce development plans were created to address gaps in staff knowledge and skills (October 2016), and 6) DPH developed a plan for annual competency revision (January 2018). In addition to meeting an accreditation standard, the goal of the WFD Committee’s work in revising and customizing the Core Competencies was for DPH to have annual data that could inform individual, programmatic, and department workforce development plans. To meet this goal, the committee developed objectives that include: 1) update the Core Competency survey biennially so that it is reflective of contemporary trends in public health, 2) engage representatives from the department biennially in survey revision specific to job classification, so that competencies are directly related to each employee’s job function and competency language is easy to understand, 3) achieve 100% annual staff survey participation, and 4) provide survey results in individual and aggregate form to every employee, manager, program area, and the department to make training recommendations. DPH has conducted a Core Competency survey three times since 2016 and has created processes and standard work to ensure that each of these objectives are met. The only objective that hasn’t been met is 100% staff participation; notably, we have had 99% participation each year (with just one staff member out of approximately 165 employees not completing the survey). Success of the survey can be attributed to a variety of factors, including: representation from staff at all levels during the revision process, a detailed communication plan for employees and managers about the focus of Core Competencies, easy-to-read results that are able to be filtered by length of employment, program area, and managerial status, and a volunteer committee that analyzes results to make departmental recommendations.