Public Health Accreditation Board's Innovation Center Continues the Mission to Advance the Quality and Performance of Health Departments

摘要

The basis of the Public Health Accreditation Board's (PHAB) accreditation program is the measurement of health department performance against a set of nationally recognized, practice-focused, and evidence-based standards.1 Such standards and measures, and the overall process itself, are used as the basis for performance improvement. When PHAB was formed, the concept of accreditation was new to many in public health. After just 10 years, we can already begin to see the impact of accreditation, and its ability to drive performance improvement in health departments, and thus think of PHAB as advancing the field for all of us. Specifically, PHAB's development has led to improvements in practice such as an increase in the number of health departments that have completed community health assessments and improvement plans2'3 and contributed greatly to the movement toward quality improvement (QI) in public health.4 It is with that mindset, of advancing the field, that PHAB launched the Public Health National Center for Innovations in November 2015. While accreditation programs must be standardized and follow rules and guidelines to maintain credibility, the Public Health National Center for Innovations is able to look ahead at emerging issues and trends in public health and ask, "What could be?"