Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department seeking national accreditation

            The United States ranks 44^th in the world in life expectancy and 41^st in the world in infant morality, the U.S Census Bureau reports.

            Disappointed by the rankings the U.S. present, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is one of the organizations seeking the means to improve health in the U.S. One of NACCHO's goals, partnered with other organizations and governed by the Public Health Accreditation Board, wants to strengthen the infrastructure of public health and is looking to do so by awarding accreditation to local health departments.

Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department
Photo taken by Jesse Brown

            The Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department is one of these local health departments seeking to achieve national accreditation, which essentially is a seal of approval from the government that will instill confidence in the community's ability to assess health problems with expertise to educate and prevent health risks.

With a recent salmonella outbreak, a recalling of candy from China because of chemicals or a parent's concern over lead-based toys, the concern for health is greater than ever.

            However, the economy is making the health department jump through hurdles.

Economic Hardships and Alternate Routes

In addition to more than a $70,000 shortfall in their operating budget from the city of Lawrence and Douglas County, which was originally approved back in April, the health department has had to make cuts to even accommodate this reduction of eight percent the city and county could offer.

This reduction of eight percent includes not hiring a new staff member to assist with accreditation, deciding not to replace two positions by retiring staff members, decreasing planned cost of living adjustment from 2 to .1 percent, reducing capital equipment purchases and increasing fees. The reduction comes to an estimated $200,600 the health department managed to cut.

Charlotte Marthaler, director of policy and planning, assures that achieving accreditation is not going to be an easy task.

"We are trying to achieve more with less," says Marthaler.  "In some cases that means simply doing more and working harder in order to achieve our goals."

Despite the difficulties the economy is making it to achieve national accreditation, there are alternatives to find more money. Announcing plans to achieve national accreditation in 2011, the health department received a $15,000 grant from NACCHO.

With NACCHO's grant, the opportunities to receive more grants become possible. The health department recently submitted a proposal to the Sunflower Foundation for $14,600 for additional training in quality improvement methods and they are in the process of submitting a proposal to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for quality improvement implementation and evaluation of these efforts.

Background to Accreditation and the Process to Accreditation

In 1988, the Institute of Medicine's "The Future of Public Health" was a manifesto as to how efficiently run health programs to deal with the health issues not only of today but tomorrow as well. In the book, the authors called for an organization to examine the benefits of accrediting governmental health departments. Accreditation became a key strategy to strengthen the public health system.

The Public Health Accreditation Board governs each health department through accreditation working with other organizations such as NACCHO.

The Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department is measuring itself by NACCHO's Operational Definition of a Functional Health Department to determine its strengths and the improvements that need to be made. They self-assessed themselves back in April with 225 different indicators and got a look at what needed improving.

The health department assessed themselves back in April with NACCHO's Operational Definition of a Functional Health Department and their overall scores are above.
Graphic: courtesy of Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department

"We're working very hard on being focused," says Marthaler. "We're trying to get ahead of the game."

Some of the things needed improving is: monitoring health status and understand health issues facing the community, engaging the community to identify and solve health problems, and evaluating and improving programs.

The top two things they scored best at were: protecting people from health problems and health hazards and enforcing public health laws and regulations.

"In order to find the resources to achieve accreditation, we are assessing what we are doing day-to-day and setting new priorities," Marthaler said.

National accreditation can bring recognition from policy makers, confidence in the health department's ability to inform and help the community, and the expertise to carry out these goals to the city of Lawrence.

In a press release, Director Dan Partridge of Lawrence-Douglas County Health department said "We believe accreditation is an important vehicle for meeting the needs of the public and is a visible demonstration of our commitment to public health."