Engage Your Community in Quality Improvement to “Move the Needle” for Positive Health Outcomes

Summary

Impact Statement: 
This local health department improved participation and contributions by their partners in the community to the Community Health Improvement Plan by 70%, leading to strengthened relationships with and more effective collaborative partnerships to take action to improve the community’s health.
Summary: 

Washington County Health Department formed a Core Quality Improvement (QI) Team. The team created an aim statement to improve community engagement and health improvement planning processes by increasing the community resources from 0%–30%, increasing effectiveness of meetings, creating a vision, and completing three of four Mobilizing for Action toward Planning and Partnership (MAPP) assessments. The result would be a local strategic plan through the Step UP performance management program. The team met regularly, determined the need for a standardized process for county-level community engagement and quality improvement, recognized the need for up-to-date data, attended training and developed strategies to increase engagement, completed community assessments, used a meeting effectiveness tool, and implemented the MAPP process. They adopted the MAPP methodology, recruited members of the local public health system, reviewed past and conducted new assessments, surveyed the community, collected and compiled results, and developed a plan and vision statement based on the results. The aim statement goals were met showing an average of 70% commitment of community resources, an increase in effective meetings from 4.13 to 4.42, completing three assessments, and completing the Step UP strategic plan. Future plans are to continue improvement by continuing training, re-evaluating, sustaining, and building upon improvements by completing Local Public Health System Assessment and creating Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) based on specific priority areas discovered.

Organization that conducted the QI initiative: 
Washington County Health Department
Citation: 

Murray, M. Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange. Engage Your Community in Quality Improvement to “Move the Needle” for Positive Health Outcomes . Thu, 12/27/2012 - 15:46. Available at http://www.phqix.org/content/engage-your-community-quality-improvement-%E2%80%9Cmove-needle%E2%80%9D-positive-health-outcomes. Accessed October 10, 2024.

Submission Status: 
Completed
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