May 1, 2008

Public Health Departments in Missouri’s Region G received notice on March 31 that they have been selected for the NACCHO (National Association of County and City Health Officials) accreditation preparation and quality improvement demonstration sites project grant. Region G counties include Carter, Douglas, Howell, Oregon, Ozark, Reynolds, Shannon, Texas and Wright counties, and they wrote and submitted a joint application. NACCHO had more than 60 applications from across the nation. Twelve were selected, and the Region G counties are nine of the 12. Each Region G county health department will receive over $18,500 for a regional total award of $167,106. The project began April 1, 2008 and is to be completed by Nov. 30, 2008. Each of the health departments will be completing a metrics self-assessment tool of their own agency and submitting the scoring and analysis to NACCHO. This assessment and score will show the individual agency’s readiness for accreditation and point out the gaps that need to be addressed and changed. NACCHO will use the results to evaluate and examine the relevance, utility, importance, and user friendliness of the metrics self assessment tool. The grantees will be contacted for a one hour interview with the NACCHO consulting firm, the National Research Center. The feedback from all 12 sites from the survey and the individual interviews will be used to inform the Public Health Accreditation Board's workgroup that is developing accreditation standards for local health departments. This intense process will be done, analyzed, and scored individually and then the Region G group will meet collaboratively. At these collaborative meetings the group will analyze the data and collectively decide on priorities and a focus issue to work on together. At this point the Region G group will choose a consultant to assist the group in its decisions and the formalization of the Region G group. The group will then submit a final report. Region G will use this opportunity to learn more about the accreditation process and standards in their own individual journey toward making an application to MICH (Missouri Institute for Community Health), which is the Missouri Voluntary Accreditation Program for local public health agencies.