Local Health Department, Multi-County

An example of bridging health and health care in rural Nebraska: In order to improve critical health outcomes of “hard to reach” patients with diabetes and high blood pressure, a local health department and a community health center partnered to use the PDSA model and best practices to provide...

Elkhorn Logan Valley Public Health Department improved the return rate of colon cancer screening kits by expanding the work process to include personal phone contact. The process now includes 3 phone attempts, within 3 weeks, to reach the participant. If still unable to reach the participant, the...

Michigan’s Maternal Infant Health Program serves low-income families and pregnant women to improve birth outcomes. A local health district in that state used the PDSA cycle to reduce office-related work and increase time for direct client services in order to make the program more efficient and...

A local health department increased early enrollment of pregnant women in smoking cessation programs to reduce risks of pregnancy complications, premature delivery, and their infants being low-birth weight, stillborn, or dying from SIDS.

This QI project used many QI tools to identify and design improvement actions to increase the redemption of food vouchers by WIC clients. While this project did not achieve the improvement target, , the development and application of tools could be helpful to other community health programs seeking...

This northern Kentucky health department wanted to increase the percentage of properly licensed mobile food vendors to correct unsafe food handling and prevent foodborne illness related to mobile food vendors such as food trucks. With the large light-industry and numerous warehouses located...

The public health community has lagged in using digital communications to make its presence and services delivered known to the general public. Gwinnett, Newton, and Rockdale County Health Departments found that creating a better experience and better information for website visitors was better...

Although located in an area with significant need for teen family planning services, a public health teen clinic in Spartanburg County had low rates of use. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control followed a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) approach and used QI tools to understand...

Access to prenatal care contributes to successful birth outcomes. A Kansas health department found that patients had challenges completing the application process for the Medicaid Children’s Health Insurance Program. By conducting patient education and assistance with the application, the health...

This six-county health district department used QI to achieve a 75% increase in response to satisfaction surveys by customers of their environmental health services.

This 10-county District health department improved the processes of immunization clinic scheduling, preparation and follow-up and reduced the number of “no shows” , leading to greater efficiency and capacity. The improved process and staff training were then standardized across the 10 counties.

The health department discovered that most of its employees were unaware of the many of the Department’s media activities for outreach and education. The department made several changes to increase employee awareness of current and new media efforts and achieved a major improvement on all three of...