National Public Health Performance Standards Assessment

Abstract

North Dakota, as a rural state with a decentralized public health system, has found the National Public Health Performance Standards Program useful in assessing performance of the state's public health system. The local instrument was used for local public health systems and on Native American reservations. A description of the process as well as aggregated results of the local performance assessment is presented. An importance ranking scale was combined with the performance scores to identify priority areas. Priority needs were specifically identified for developing community health profiles, working more closely with community partnerships, and increasing emphasis on health education activities. The process was a good opportunity for bringing partners together in local public health systems and for developing interest in using the more complete strategic planning tools in Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships.

From service provision to function based performance - perspectives on public health systems from the USA and Israel

“…The EPHS has been shown to be widely applicable, and has been used for a variety of purposes, including addressing both specific health threats, such as diabetes and workplace safety [10-12], and helping refine agency operations in times of fiscal crisis [13]. In addition, they have been used to assess the delivery of public health services [14,15], and modified and used to improve the delivery of more general public health services, specifically environmental health services [16-18]. Perhaps the most significant impact of the EPHS has been that they transcend the basic programmatic areas contained in the “Basic 6”, and emphasize that it is necessary to focus on population based activities, as opposed to clinical care services, in the provision of public health services.…”

“…The program was responsible for the development of three new instruments to measure public health performance in local public health systems, state public health systems, and local public health governance organizations. These measures were validated and have been used for a number of purposes: quality improvement, assessment of community health capacity, and research on the public health system [12,14,15,21-24]. …”