The Power of Community in Addressing Infant Mortality Inequities.

On opposite ends of North Carolina, collaborations in Buncombe and Chatham counties are tackling infant mortality inequities with innovative strategies. While their strategies differ, both groups use an approach that is driven by authentic community voice and directly contributes to dismantling structural racism. The Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville is transitioning their leadership of the Mothering Asheville Coalition to SistasCaring4Sistas, a group of Black doulas with lived experience, and is supporting the doulas' work to become a nonprofit organization that will serve the entire state.

Performance management models for public health: Public Health Accreditation Board/Baldrige connections, alignment, and distinctions.

Context: The nationally known Malcolm Baldrige Award for Excellence ("Baldrige program") recognizes outstanding performance management and is specifically cited by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) as a potential framework for PHAB's requisite performance management system. The authors developed a crosswalk that identifies alignments between the 2 programs and is a highlight of the Quest for Exceptional Performance tool that is intended to help health departments capitalize on the connections between the 2 programs.

Objective: To provide deeper insight into the most robust connections between the 2 programs.

Achieving a culture of quality improvement.

The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is the national organization representing local health departments. It supports efforts that protect and improve the health of all people and all communities by promoting national policy, developing resources and programs, seeking health equity, and supporting effective local public health practice and systems.

Driving quality improvement in local public health practice.

Objectives: To understand what tools, resources, and assistance are needed for local health departments (LHDs) to successfully engage in quality improvement (QI) and to generate examples of successful QI efforts.

Methods: With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Association of County & City Health Officials supported 66 LHD demonstration sites between 2007 and 2009. The sites measured themselves against national standards and addressed priority areas for improvement through the application of QI techniques.

Quality improvement in local health departments: progress, pitfalls, and potential.

Objectives: To assess the current deployment of quality improvement (QI) approaches within local health departments (LHDs) and gain a better understanding of the depth and intensity of QI activities.

Methods: A mixed quantitative and qualitative approach was employed to determine the current status of QI utilization within LHDs. All respondents from the 2005 NACCHO Profile QI module questionnaire who indicated that their LHD was involved in some kind of QI activity received a follow-up Web-based survey in 2007.

The operational definition of a functional local public health agency: the next strategic step in the quest for identity and relevance.

In 2002, the National Association of County and City Health Officials embarked on a quest to clarify, in a uniform way, the functions of governmental local public health agencies. Over the next 3 years, a diverse group of local health department officials and their partners developed an Operational Definition of a Functional Local Health Department, which included 45 standards matched to the 10 Essential Services. These standards serve as the first comprehensive and uniform articulation of local health department activities for which 250 prototype metrics have subsequently been developed.

Final recommendations for a voluntary national accreditation program for state and local health departments: steering committee report.

A recently released report of the Exploring Accreditation Project affirmatively answered the questions regarding the desirability and feasibility of establishing a national voluntary public health accreditation program. The report's recommendations were made after 10 months of inquiry from public health experts, elected officials, the general public health workforce, academicians, and other interested parties, more than 650 public health professionals in all. Recommendations regarding how such a program might be implemented insofar as its governance, principles for standards development, financing and incentives, and evaluation were included.