Voices across Kansas: community health assessment and improvement efforts among local health departments.

Context: Community health assessment (CHA) and community health improvement planning (CHIP) is central to public health accreditation and essential functions and therefore important to local health departments (LHDs). However, rural states face significant challenges to pursue public health accreditation.

Objective: The purpose of this statewide study was to identify factors that impede or promote the timeliness of CHA and CHIP completion.