Should State and Local Health Departments Be Accredited?
I will dare to venture that many people do not appreciate the vital role our local and state health departments must play in the health of our communities. Health departments perform a wide range of wellness initiatives, including, just to name a few: reaching out to new parents, educating about disease prevention and management, promoting clean air and water, administering to low-income families and the elderly, and supplying disaster assistance. In addition, our health departments track a dizzying array of statistics to monitor and improve our well being.
Health departments also play an important role in assuring food safety by teaching about safe food handling practices, inspecting grocery stores and restaurants, and investigating foodborne illnesses and outbreaks.
Given the significance of public health, a movement has been underway since 2007 to create a national system for ensuring the accountability and quality of our health departments. Spurred by two Institute of Medicine studies which found that public health in America was in disarray, the non-profit Public Health Accreditation Board (“PHAB”) was created and tasked with launching a national public health accreditation program.
The CDC, a sponsor of PHAB, stated that "Just as the public expects hospitals, law enforcement agencies and schools to be accredited so should they come to expect public health departments." The accreditation program, set to launch this coming fall, requires health departments to meet stringent requirements for 10 essential areas of public health activities and demonstrate a commitment to constant improvement. Some of the benefits of accreditation include:
- People from the east to west coast can expect the same quality of health services no matter where they live;
- The accreditation process provides measurable feedback to health departments on their strengths and weaknesses so they can better serve;
- Accreditation is an opportunity for health departments to promote what they do and show taxpayers that dollars are well spent; and
- Top health professionals will be drawn to employment at accredited departments.
One area in which health departments will be evaluated is their ability to investigate environmental health hazards. Whether a health department meets this standard could mean the difference between your company’s future success or future decline.
Largely due to an increase of reported foodborne illnesses and outbreaks (brought about by advances such as PulseNet and PFGE and MLVA testing), health departments are under increasing pressure to solve more and more outbreaks at any one time. In turn, this pressure, and limited or unqualified resources, can lead health departments to reach erroneous conclusions about the sources of foodborne illness outbreaks. Unfortunately, I have defended several wrongly accused, innocent companies.
I have had the pleasure of interacting with some incredible health departments, but based on my numerous poor experiences, it is a solid step for all health departments to apply to this voluntary accreditation program. If a health department does not apply to compare itself against the other health departments in the country, and the national standards approved by PAHB, then communities should ask why. Accredited or not, however, if a health department report comes across my desk, we will, as always, thoroughly verify its conclusions before advising our clients.
