Commendation Criteria: Meeting Compliance Expectations

We want to do everything we can to support the IPCE community’s successful adoption of the Menu of Criteria for Joint Accreditation with Commendation. Each criterion in the menu includes critical elements and standards, which describe expectations and how compliance is measured. You can find these descriptions in the Joint Accreditation Framework.

In response to questions we’ve received and to help jointly accredited providers determine which criteria to fulfill, we offer the following clarifications about the requirements for compliance.

Frequency: Some of the criteria standards require that providers attest to meeting the criterion in a number or percentage of their activities, depending on the program size. For these criteria, we expect providers to demonstrate the frequency of activities that have met the critical elements. For these criteria, if the same content is repeated for different audiences, at different times or places, those count as separate instances. This measure is used for Joint Accreditation Criteria (JAC) 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 23. (For JAC 22, evidence is demonstrated through a number of learners or teams based on program size).

Diversity and breadth: Other criteria standards require that providers demonstrate compliance through a specified number of examples of activities or initiatives. With these examples, we expect providers to demonstrate the diversity and breadth of approaches they used to meet the critical elements. For these criteria, providers need to submit examples that are completely different from each other. Different iterations of the same activity content repeated for different audiences at different times and places, would not count as separate examples. This measure is used for JAC 15, 16, 19, 24, and 25.