Lessons learned from Oregon's pursuit of public health accreditation

Oregon has been aggressively pursuing health reform. In tandem with these efforts to address health care cost and quality, Oregon is also working to reform the public health system to improve prevention. Accreditation, which recognizes state and local health departments that demonstrate the 10 essential services, has the potential to be a tool to evolve the public health system. As one component of a CDC grant-funded project to enhance the public health policy and quality improvement infrastructure and accelerate accreditation readiness, Oregon's state public health agency is working to complete the three major required pre-requisites (i.e., State Health Assessment, Agency Strategic Plan, and State Health Improvement Plan) needed to submit a letter of intent to apply for accreditation by September of 2012. Oregon's state public health agency has also provided grants to 13 of Oregon's 34 local health departments to help accelerate accreditation readiness. This presentation will highlight lessons learned from Oregon's first year of accreditation-related efforts, including: 1) engaging partners within and outside of the public health system; 2) developing the state-level pre-requisite documents in the context of health reform; 3) the strategic value of state and local partnerships in evolving the public health system; and, 4) use of the accreditation processes to better align and leverage resources within a public health system. An informal mid-year assessment in Oregon suggests that while accreditation itself is merely a designation, the careful self-study involved in accreditation pre-requisites can offer public health leaders the opportunity to refocus their organization and programs.