142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

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Improving community health assessment and improvement planning in Wisconsin

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Monday, November 17, 2014 : 1:10 PM - 1:30 PM

Julie A. Willems Van Dijk, RN, PhD , School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, Madison, WI
Sarah J. Beversdorf, MPH/MSW , Wisconsin Public Health Association, Kimberly, WI
A baseline assessment of Wisconsin’s local health departments’ capacity to conduct community health assessment and improvement planning was conducted in 2011. Over the ensuing three years, a suite of tools was developed to further strengthen this capacity. These tools were developed in partnership with other projects to study and improve Wisconsin’s community health improvement processes including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) funded County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and a study sponsored by the Wisconsin Public Health Practice Based Research Network and funded by RWJF to measure the quality of Wisconsin’s community health assessments and improvement plans. The tools were pilot tested in ten Wisconsin communities. This session will focus on the results of follow-up evaluation done in 2014 to measure how well the tools met the needs of pilot communities and how the capacity of Wisconsin’s local health departments has changed over the past three years. Evaluation methods include key informant interviews, material review and surveys.  The full set of revised tools will be introduced to participants. Steps to continuously improve the system will also be discussed, including a new project to enhance the capacity of Wisconsin communities to implement and evaluate community health improvement activities. Funding for this project was provided by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health from the Wisconsin Partnership Program.

Learning Areas:

Program planning

Learning Objectives:
Describe changes in the capacity of Wisconsin’s local health departments to conduct community health assessment and improvement plans. Identify tools that could benefit participants’ communities’ ability to conduct community health assessment and improvement planning.

Keyword(s): Community Health Assessment, Community Health Planning

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been a public health practitioner for 25 years with primary responsibility for community health assessment and improvement planning as a local health officer. I also have a PhD and have researched the quality of community health assessment and improvement planning. As the Deputy Director of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program, I have observed community health improvement processes in communities across the nation.
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.