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National Voluntary Accreditation for Public Health Departments

Preparing for Accreditation

Many national partner organizations play important roles in facilitating state, tribal, local, and territorial health department engagement in accreditation. In addition to partnering with PHAB, CDC supports the following organizations in advancing accreditation readiness:

What Should Health Departments Do?

  • Learn about accreditation—Visit PHAB and other partner websites to learn about the accreditation standards and measures, the accreditation process, and supporting materials.
  • Prepare for accreditation—Determine where your health department has gaps and begin to address them. Identify individuals to work on cross-department accreditation readiness efforts.
  • Celebrate and sustain your accomplishments—If your health department is accredited, celebrate and tout this impressive achievement! Plan for reaccreditation. If you’re not yet accredited, recognize where you’re already meeting standards and highlight those successes to build enthusiasm for the next steps. Continue to improve your performance against the PHAB standards.

Preparation Tools and Resources

State Health Department Accreditation
ASTHO provides information about accreditation preparation tools and current state activities.

Local Health Department Accreditation
NACCHO provides tools, resources, and training opportunities to help local health departments prepare for accreditation and use quality improvement processes to improve performance and meet PHAB standards. NACCHO also supports the CDC/NACCHO Accreditation Support Initiative. This initiative provides small amounts of funding to local and territorial health departments to accelerate accreditation readiness.

Tribal Public Health Accreditation Readiness Resources

Other tribal readiness resources, some developed with CDC support, are available on other sites:

  • Tribal Accreditation Readiness Guidebook and Roadmap [PDF-6.2MB]
    This Red Star Innovations report contains information about tribal public health systems, benefits of accreditation, eligibility for public health accreditation, the accreditation application process, and readiness phases. The Institute for Wisconsin Health hosts the report on its site.

PHAB Resources
PHAB has helpful resources for health departments preparing to achieve or maintain accreditation status. These resources include orientation training modules, the Standards and Measures, the Guide to Health Department Accreditation, and glossary. Under the “Accreditation Process” tab are tip sheets, readiness checklists, application information, and an accreditation coordinator handbook.

PHF—Performance Management and Quality Improvement Resources
PHF’s site offers assorted tools and resources concerning performance management, quality improvement, public health improvement, workforce development, and other topics. The site includes the PHF Public Health Improvement Resource Center, where users can search an online database of information and resources about building capacity of public health systems by category, such as accreditation domain and essential service.

NNPHI—Performance and Quality Improvement Resources
NNPHI and its member public institutes provide technical assistance and resources to advance accreditation, performance, and quality improvement.

Other Resources

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