Online Program

325513
Biting Back: Vector Control Program Performance Assessment and Improvement Projects


Wednesday, November 4, 2015 : 12:50 p.m. - 1:10 p.m.

John W. Moran, PhD, CQM, Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
Micaela Kirshy, MPH, LICSW, Public Health Foundation, Washington, DC
The purpose of this session will be to share the strategy of using self-assessments, prioritization processes, and achievable quality improvement projects to improve the effectiveness and capacity of vector control programs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Public Health Foundation (PHF) are collaborating on the Vector Control Program Performance Assessment and Improvement Initiative. This initiative includes 14 local health departments (LHDs) to help increase the performance of their vector control programs. The LHDs begin by conducting a self-assessment using the Environmental Public Health Performance Standards developed by the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Following the self-assessment, each agency prioritized its performance improvement and capacity needs, and implemented their improvement plans to address an identified area of need. PHF assisted on-site and remotely to help the health departments in using a variety of Quality Improvement (QI) methods and tools to achieve measurable improvements.

This session will highlight the experiences and steps taken by the 14 LHDs to assess performance, prioritize goals, and then develop of a performance improvement project to help build capacity and improve effectiveness by achieving measureable improvement. By the time of this session, PHF will have a variety of valuable lessons learned to share with participants to help inform participants’ ideas about developing and implementing improvement projects.

This session will be greatly useful to those involved with vector control. However, because the tools and techniques discussed could be used to address a myriad of other environmental health topics, participants looking to improve their program’s performance in any area of environmental health will find value in this session.

Learning Areas:

Environmental health sciences
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Public health administration or related administration

Learning Objectives:
Describe concrete Quality Improvement tools used to improve the performance of vector control programs at local health departments. Compare performance improvement project success stories for vector control programs at local health departments. Identify lessons learned during the vector control performance improvement process.

Keyword(s): Quality Improvement, Environmental Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: John W. Moran, Ph.D. is a Senior Quality Advisor to the Public Health Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota, School of Public Health in the Division of Health Policy and Management. President of the Advisory Board of Choose To Be Healthy Coalition of the Healthy Maine Partnership for York County, Maine, 2011 – present. A faculty member of the CDC/IHI Antibiotic Stewardship project 2011-2012.
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.