Regionalization

Many small health departments across the country do not have the capacity to meet the standards in the Operational Definition of a Functional Health Department. These standards and measures are serving as the framework for the national accreditation 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.

Kansas and Massachusetts are involved in efforts to build on their successes with regionalization for all-hazards preparedness, and expand existing regional arrangements to provide additional public health services. NACCHO is supporting these efforts with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

NACCHO supports efforts to ensure that everyone is served by a local health department that meets the Operational Definition standards. NACCHO will disseminate lessons learned, case studies, and tools developed during the course of this project.

For more information, please contact Jessica Solomon at jsolomon@naccho.org or (202) 507-4265.