In the last few years, increasing attention has been paid to the development of health policies. But side by side with the presumed benefits of policy, many analysts share the opinion that a major drawback of health policies is their failure to make room for issues of human resources. Current approaches in human resources suggest a number of weaknesses: a reactive, ad hoc attitude towards probl...

The recent economic recession and its aftermath negatively impacted many local health departments (LHDs) across the U.S. Seven surveys conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) between August 2009 and February 2012 produced informa­ tive data (NACCHO, 2012). Each wave of the study showed that in comparing the current and prior fiscal years about 40% of L...

In recent years, there has been a growing number of programs employing health navigators to assist underserved individuals in overcoming barriers to obtaining regular and quality health care. This article describes the perspectives and experiences of community-based health navigators in the Cambodian and Laotian communities involved in a REACH 2010 project to reduce health disparities in breast...

CONTEXT Many state and local public health agencies have developed accreditation systems and are utilizing quality improvement (QI) methods and tools to improve the public health infrastructure. Development of strategies to support and build the capacity of the public health workforce to apply QI can help advance these efforts. OBJECTIVE This article describes the adaptation and creation of a...

ay ad pr and rem P ment and funding are often regarded as ministrative transfers; and yet, funding is rarely ovided without strings attached. Where funding uneration are made conditional on certain behaviours (eg, working a set number of hours, seeing a certain number of patients, undertaking specific tasks or tasks of a certain standard, or “doing a good job”), financial incentives are created...

The field of public health services and systems research (PHSSR) has emerged over the past decade to produce the evidence needed to address critical uncertainties about how best to organize, finance, and deliver effective public health strategies to all Americans. To advance these efforts, a national PHSSR research agenda-setting process was used to identify a broad inventory of information nee...