Connecting the Dots on Complementary Efforts to Enhance LHD Performance

Establishment of a voluntary national program for state and local public health departments, led by the Public Health Accreditation Board, is underway. This program is designed to improve and protect the health of the public by advancing the quality and performance of state and local public health departments. While the program is being developed, state and local jurisdictions can take steps to enhance health department capacity, engage in continuous quality improvement, and, thus, become positioned to be accredited. State and local jurisdictions across the country have applied several complementary tools to measure and improve performance: Operational Definition of a Functional Local Health Department (Operational Definition), Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP), and the recently-updated National Public Health Performance Standards Program (NPHPSP) state and local public health system assessments. These three tools can be used alone or in tandem for performance measurement and quality improvement purposes. This session will describe these tools and share stories from the field about how they have been used for performance improvement and to meet state standards.