Center Launches Much Anticipated Public Health Improvement Map Pilot

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• Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 March 2013 18:53

 

The Center for Public Health Quality, working together with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and the Public Health Foundation, is developing and pilot testing a user-friendly, web-based resource to help local health departments and community organizations select and implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs) to improve priority population health conditions.  Currently, existing EBI resources fall short of meeting the needs of practitioners due to their focus on assessing the evidence versus providing resources for selection and implementation – this initiative aims to close that gap. Based upon the IHI’s Improvement Map for US Hospitals, the Public Health Improvement Map (iMap) will use the priority health conditions included in both the Leading Health Indicators and North Carolina’s Healthy NC 2020 objectives as the starting point for targeting EBIs.

The first phase of this project will be executed through May 2013, and will rely heavily on critical input from four NC local health departments and their community partners as pilot test sites in collaboration with the Center for Healthy North Carolina and several NC Division of Public Health (DPH) programs. The four pilot sites are the Buncombe County, Catawba County, Cleveland County and Henderson County Health Departments. The overall goal of the first phase is to learn how to best serve the needs of community-based practitioners by testing and improving both the content and functionality of this resource with pilot sites. After using lessons learned to further adapt the tool, a second phase of the project will begin in June 2013 to pilot test the iMap with a larger, broader set of pilot sites and to begin preparations for the 3rd and final stage of a national launch in 2014.