Completing community health assessments and community health improvement plans for accreditation preparation: Findings from a national demonstration project

With the launch of the nation's first public health accreditation program, local health departments (LHDs) are forging ahead to meet national standards to advance quality and strengthen performance to improve the public's health. Completion of a community health assessment (CHA) and community health improvement plan (CHIP) are two of three accreditation prerequisites and although, according to the National Association of County and City Health Official's (NACCHO) 2010 Profile of LHDs, 75% of LHDs reported having ever completed a CHA and 60% a CHIP, many are now doing so with the explicit intent to meet the accreditation standards. In 2011, NACCHO launched a 12 LHD demonstration project to yield exemplary CHAs and CHIPs and to identify successful strategies for doing so with the goals of increasing LHD readiness for national accreditation and improving the quality of community health improvement processes. This session will describe the demonstration findings to date by detailing the 12 LHDs' journeys using Mobilizing for Action Through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) or one other community health improvement process model to complete CHAs and CHIPs to prepare for accreditation. Successes and challenges the LHDs experienced in engaging community members and public health system partners (e.g., non-profit hospital(s), academic institutions, and more), addressing the social determinants of health, and using quality improvement techniques in developing their CHA and CHIP will be discussed. Participants will leave the session with practical strategies, lessons learned and knowledge about tools and resources available for completing CHAs and CHIPs in their own communities.