As public health moves toward voluntary accreditation, continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a methodology being used to address opportunities for improvement in a systematic and focused way. The Center for Public Health Practice is partnering with state organizations to assist public health agencies in adopting CQI methods.

The Association of Ohio Health Commissioners and the Ohio Voluntary Accreditation Team are the lead partners on this project which is funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Transition grant. The purpose is to demonstrate how performance standards may be met by engaging in a rigorous CQI process, and to make recommendations for establishing an infrastructure to sustain CQI across Ohio's public health system.

This demonstration project provides training and technical assistance for four local health department quality improvement teams. These teams are from the Canton City Health Department, Erie County Health Department, Hamilton County Health Department and Zanesville-Muskingum Health District. The teams' projects were identified with an organizational self-assessment process using performance standards developed by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

Components of this project include one-day training for the 4 selected projects, bi-weekly conference calls, just-in-time training webinars, coaching and support for individual teams as needed. In addition, with support from the Center, mentoring is provided by the 4 Ohio teams who participated in the RWJF Multi-state Learning Collaborative (MLC-2)

The evaluation component is extensive, examining the success of the team projects, the elements of the support provided, and organizational culture change in order to identify lessons learned and best/promising practices. Both quantitative and qualitative evaluation techniques are being used.

To learn more about Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) contact Racquel Graham at 614-292-1179 or rgraham@cph.osu.edu.

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The Center for Public Health Practice is a part of The Ohio State University's College of Public Health. The center is home to federally funded public health programs, including the Center for Public Health Preparedness, Pennsylvania and Ohio Public Health Training Center and the Buckeye Bluegrass Regional Leadership Academy. The center provides training to hundreds of public health practitioners every year through in-person and online programs. It also offers contractual and fee-for-service support in the areas of organizational and leadership development.