250003 Assessing the impact of chronic disease program integration efforts on health outcomes: Applying wisdom from literature and practice

Monday, October 31, 2011

Jeanne Alongi, MPH , Managing Partner, The Pump Handle Group, Sacramento, CA
Background: As financial and other resource pressures increase, state health departments are increasingly exploring program integration strategies to manage chronic disease prevention and health promotion activities. Program integration expects to improve overall effectiveness of chronic disease prevention and control activities of state health departments without jeopardizing the impact of individual programs. Ensuring that expectations for health outcomes are justified is crucial for ethical and effective public health practice. Discussion: Assessing the impact of chronic disease program integration efforts in on health outcomes is complicated by long time horizons and contextual factors that may or may not contribute to effective implementation of these efforts. Organizational effectiveness researchers have focused more on the private sector than on public sector public health practice. The public health chronic disease literature focuses on intervention efficacy but often does not examine the contextual factors related to management and administration. However, review of these two bodies of literature and consideration of public health practice knowledge shared in real time reveals opportunities for credible application of non-public health management literature and suggests reasonable links to be made between organizational behavior, successful program delivery, and ultimately improved health outcomes. Conclusion: The application of innovative leadership and management strategies such as program integration may facilitate efficiencies and improved effectiveness. Managers must be able to forecast expected outcomes and document the progress towards these outcomes. The wisdom gleaned from the management and organizational effectiveness literature coupled with wisdom gleaned from public health practice examples can help close the current knowledge gap to understanding the links between program integration strategy implementation and health outcomes.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Chronic disease management and prevention
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Program planning
Public health administration or related administration
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
1. Identify and apply relevant resources from the management and organizational effectiveness literature. 2. Discuss strengths and weakness of common impact measures. 3. Identify and locate state health department practice examples.

Keywords: Chronic Diseases, Leadership

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have 12 years of public health practice experience, four years of masters and doctoral level public health education, and primary responsibility for providing technical assistance from my organization to state health departments working in this area.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Hot Topics for Health Administrators
See more of: Health Administration