NEWS FROM NACCHO: A Quality Improvement Initiative to Enhance Public Health Workforce Capabilities
Anne Drabczyk PhD
Paul Epstein BS
Martha Marshall MA

$3.95 		Journal of Public Health Management & Practice
February 2012 
Volume 18  Number 1
Pages 95 - 99
 
  PDF Version Available!

ABSTRACT
Local health jurisdictions work on the front lines to combat threats to the health of their communities including those associated with disasters and other public health all-hazards everyday. In 2003, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) established the Advanced Practice Centers (APC) program in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide local health departments (LHDs) with access to critical public health preparedness resources. For the last 7 years, the APC program has been at the forefront of public health preparedness and worked diligently to create more than 100 products that benefit LHDs. One intent of the program is that APCs save LHDs substantial time, energy, and money by creating products that are free and easily adaptable and can be quickly and easily integrated into local plans, procedures, and practices. These tools mean that LHDs do not have to reinvent the wheel through access to tried and true products that enhance public health workforce capabilities. During the 2010 to 2011 program year, the APC launched a quality improvement (QI) initiative that captured feedback of end users through a QI product and process evaluation. This column details the lessons learned from the yearlong initiative.Quality improvement has been broadly defined for public health as "the use of a deliberate and defined improvement process, such as Plan-Do-Check-Act, which is focused on activities that are responsive to community needs and improving population health. It refers to a continuous and ongoing effort to achieve measurable improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness, performance, accountability, outcomes, and other indicators of quality in services or processes [that] achieve equity and improve the health of the community."1(p6)Quality improvement is especially important now in public health, as state and local health department funding has become more and more constrained and while expectations for

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