Many small health departments across the country may not have the capacity to meet the Operational Definition of a Functional Health Department – the standards upon which the Public Health Accreditation Board is basing the national accrediation standards for local health departments.
Regionalization offers a strategy to help smaller health departments meet these standards, and thereby ensure that their jurisdictions are receiving all public health services that they have the right to expect.
With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NACCHO is supporting initiatives in two different states to regionalize public health services across neighboring health departments.
Both Kansas and Massachusetts are involved in grassroots efforts to build on their successes with regionalization for all-hazards preparedness and expand regional arrangements for other public health services.
NACCHO is committed to supporting additional health department efforts to regionalize, or otherwise collaborate in order to ensure that everyone, regardless of where they live, is served by a local health department that meets the standards of the Operational Definition.
NACCHO will disseminate lessons learned, case studies and tools developed during the course of this project. Others interested in replicating all of parts of these efforts can use these resources as a foundation on which to begin or build their work.
For more information, please contact Jessica Solomon at jsolomon@naccho.org or at (202) 783-5550, Ext. 266.
Public Health Regionalization Study: National Overview » 
