There is growing consensus in the public health field on an articulated set of core public health functions (assessment, policy development, and assurance) and their component ten essential public health services as the blueprint for local and state agency operations. Public health agencies are working to identify what is needed to implement these functions and services in a reconfigured and fluid policy and market environment. To that end, the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) and the Johns Hopkins University Women's and Children's Health Policy Center (WCHPC), in partnership with the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), have prepared a set of tools for state maternal and child health (MCH) programs (as defined in Title V of the Social Security Act) to use in assessing their capacity to implement public MCH program functions. Program capacity is assessed in several domains, including structural resources (such as funding, statutory authority, written protocols, and advisory bodies), organizational relationships with other state agencies and professional and community groups, and skills and competencies of the workforce. The Capacity Assessment for State Title V (CAST-5) tools are designed to facilitate long-term planning about program mission and goals in different health policy and systems contexts, as well as to aid in the identification of organizational and systems-level resources required to fulfill diverse program objectives. CAST-5 is designed to correspond to and enhance efforts underway nationally to implement local and state-level public health performance measurement instruments with an approach tailored to the MCH mission.
Learning Objectives: 1. To describe a set of tools for state public health agencies to assess their organizational capacity to carry out core public health functions specific to maternal and child health. 2. To understand the role of performance and capacity assessment for state MCH programs in the context of other national performance measurement initiatives. 3. To illustrate the use of these tools as part of a range of organizational and program planning processes
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.