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Conducting Applied Research

Full list of PHF Reports

National Profile of Local Public Health Agencies

Healthy People 2010 Website Evaluation

Radiation and Chemical Information Needs for Health Agencies

Improvement of State Medicaid Data Quality and Use in Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities

Privatization and Public Health

Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Health Improvement Survey

Assessing State and Local Capacity to Measure Year 2000 Objectives Project

Compiling and Presenting Data

Community Health Status Indicators Project

Public Health Expenditures

Advancing Public Health Systems Research

Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice - Public Health Systems Research

 

 

Public Health Data and Research

Public health systems need access to data and applied public health research in order to make evidence-based policy decisions, strengthen their infrastructure, and improve their performance. To help build this science base, PHF...

Conducts applied research
Compiles and presents data
Advances the field of public health systems research

If you are looking for additional research on important public health systems questions, visit the Public Health Infrastructure Resource Center—PHF's compilation of reports, fact sheets, tools, and other resources on such topics as systems and organizational capacity, data and information systems, workforce capacity, emergency preparedness infrastructure, and performance management.

Conducting Applied Public Health Research

PHF has been involved in numerous research efforts, ranging from administering large surveys, to conducting small focus groups. View the complete list of PHF reports or read about selected projects below.

National Profile of Local Public Health Agencies

The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) contracted with PHF to implement the 2005 NACCHO National Profile of Local Public Health Agencies. The Profile's goal is to obtain a picture of local governmental public health practice and infrastructure. To do this, every public health agency in the nation was contacted in June 2005. NACCHO's Profile is the only effort of its kind and has strategic importance to the nation's public health. There have been three previous Profile studies conducted in 1989, 1993, and 1996. In 1999 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded NACCHO to conduct a Local Public Health Agency Infrastructure Survey.

Click here to learn more about the Profile.

 

Healthy People 2010 Website Evaluation

An April 2005 report developed by PHF for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) reveals that public health professionals prefer to gather information that would help them in developing evidence-based programs from "trusted sources." These trusted sources include health associations, professional listservs, and universities, as well as state health departments with a reputation for excellence in a particular area. "Assessing the National Library of Medicine's Healthy People 2010 Information Access Project" highlights the results of a focus group study held by PHF to gather information about how public health professionals view and use the NLM's Healthy People 2010 Information Access Project website. The focus group study also reveals information about public health professionals' impressions of the site and its organization, as well as navigation and search preferences.

Click here to download the report.

For more information, please e-mail Jacalyn Carden.

 

Radiation and Chemical Information Needs for Health Agencies

In a cooperative effort, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and PHF analyzed data from five focus group conference calls and a web-based workshop to:

  • Determine the type and extent of radiation information requested from public health agencies;
  • Determine how prepared agencies are to answer the public's questions; and
  • Discover the factors that would help the agencies optimize their performance when providing radiation information.

Study findings include:

  1. A wide variety in types of information being requested with topics ranging from radon gas in homes and in drinking water, nuclear power plants and potential attacks on them, nuclear waste and waste sites, dirty bombs, regulations, license requirements, uranium mines, to medical uses of radiation;
  2. A noted lack of protocols or knowledge management systems in use to ensure consistent responses to callers; and
  3. A recognition of the importance of forming partnerships with the media and strengthening existing partnerships with first responders to be able to rapidly and accurately provide information in case of a radiological emergency or accident.

The report makes several recommendations to improve the access to and dissemination of information about radiation to the public, as well as outlines a plan for the development of a comprehensive radiation information clearinghouse.

Click here to download the report "Assessing and Meeting the Radiation Information Requirements of the Public: Developing an Initial Framework to Meet the Needs of State, Local and Tribal Health Agencies."

For more information, please e-mail Jennifer Stanley.

 

Improvement of State Medicaid Data Quality and Use in Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities

Under a cooperative agreement with the Office of Minority Health (OMH) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), PHF conducted a survey of the Medicaid and public health agencies in California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York State, New York City, South Carolina, and Texas.  The survey had the following objectives:

  • Examine what states are doing to improve racial and ethnic data collection and quality in the Medicaid program;
  • Provide useful information on barriers to collecting and sharing high-quality Medicaid data on race and ethnicity;
  • Document states’ exemplary practices related to Medicaid racial and ethnic data collection, sharing, and quality improvement; and
  • Document states’ efforts to target and eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health status using Medicaid data.

The survey yielded the following recommendations and strategies directed to federal and state agencies, such as OMH and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), that can provide incentives and remove barriers to the collection, sharing, quality improvement, and use of Medicaid racial and ethnic data.

  • States should incorporate explicit racial and ethnic objectives into State Health Plans (e.g., Healthy People 2010), State Medicaid Plans, and Medicaid Managed Care waiver applications submitted to CMS;
  • State Medicaid and public health agencies should develop partnerships with academic institutions;
  • Medicaid and public health agencies should build collaborative relationships; and
  • State Medicaid and public health agencies should commit to a systematic and regular review of racial and ethnic reports on health disparities.

In addition to the survey, PHF conducted a literature review and series of a technical assistance workshops for four states.

To view report in PDF format, click here.

For more information, please e-mail Ron Bialek.

 

Privatization and Public Health

In 1996, the Annie E. Casey Foundation requested PHF assistance in developing a landscape of the impacts of privatization on public health.  Privatization encompasses managed care, as well as the conversion of public hospitals to the private sector, and the outsourcing of public health functions and activities to the private sector. To institute some common ground and provide the basis for discussion, PHF developed a broad, working definition of privatization:

Privatization encompasses those activities/services for which the state or local health department has reached a formal decision to withdraw from or contract out for provision of a public health service, in whole or in part, and, a non-governmental entity has taken over responsibility for provision of that service. This may include development of formal partnerships with the private sector to offer public health activities/services not previously provided by the health department.

Issues examined include:

  • Impact privatization activities have on the relationships between state and local public health departments;
  • How public accountability is (or should be) achieved between government and its new private sector partners;
  • Challenges and issues faced by public health agencies in forming, monitoring, and maintaining partnerships with the private sector; and
  • Potential impacts on public health programs and the public's health.

In order to achieve these goals, PHF staff conducted a three-tiered study.

  1. Site visits to two health departments that have undertaken comprehensive privatization efforts -- Minneapolis and Union County, Oregon.
  2. Statewide survey of Maryland which included a focus group with local health officers, site visits to six health departments, and phone interviews with several local and state health officials.
    3.
  3. Telephone interviews with 11 local health departments that have privatized some services.
    4.

This study helped clarify lessons learned about privatization and was designed to lay the groundwork for a Casey Foundation effort to develop models for strengthening public health programs under an evolving health care marketplace. To read the Executive Summary, click here. To read the full report click here.

For more information, please e-mail Ron Bialek.

 

Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Health Improvement Survey

Building upon the EZ/EC Health Benchmarking Demonstration Project, PHF surveyed all EZ/ECs in 2000 on behalf of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), HHS. The survey assessed EZ/EC efforts to improve health, their interest and capacity to undertake health improvement planning, and what types of assistance could help EZ/ECs better address health as part of their economic revitalization efforts.  Click here for the results in PDF format.

For more information, please e-mail Jacalyn Carden.

 

Assessing State and Local Capacity to Measure Year 2000 Objectives Project

This project assessed the capacity of states and localities to monitor progress toward their Year 2000 health objectives. It was conceived to assist in monitoring progress toward Healthy People 2000 objective 22.2(a), developing performance indicators for national monitoring, and planning for the Healthy People 2010 process. This project enables states to learn how other states have been successful in defining measures and using data to monitor and evaluate performance.

Working with NCHS and ODPHP, PHF surveyed all 50 states and 12 local jurisdictions in March 1997 on their health objectives and tracking capacities. They were also asked about their tracking of health status indicators.

Click here to see a copy of the report.

Click here to order a copy of the Healthy People 2010 Toolkit: A Field Guide to Health Planning.

Click here to view the Healthy People 2010 Toolkit on the web.

For more information, please e-mail Jacalyn Carden.

Compiling and Presenting Data

Community Health Status Indicators Project

The Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI 2000) project produced county-specific reports of community health status for local jurisdictions across the United States. This collaborative activity of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of County and City Health Officials and PHF was funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, HHS.

The goal of the CHSI project is to provide important health and health-related data, presented in a way that makes them useful to communities. It builds upon the excellent work in developing community health profiles by many state and local health departments, federal agencies, and national organizations, by adding data elements and comparisons that are not readily available to the majority of local communities. For a description of the CHSI 2000 data, please click here.

The CHSI reports were removed from the HRSA web site in October 2002, but are still available on CD-ROM, along with the entire CHSI database. You may order a CD-ROM by going to the PHF Bookstore.

Through a new partnership, involving several federal government agencies and partner organizations, updated CHSI profiles and a downloadable database will be available by in the Spring of 2008 at http://www.communityhealth.hhs.gov/.

For more information, please e-mail Jennifer Stanley.

 

Public Health Expenditures

In order to better understand how public health agencies operate and allocate resources, PHF has been working closely with its national partners to develop, test, and refine methods to document expenditures for the Essential Public Health Services. The ultimate goal of this effort is to enable the public health community to examine and understand its own strengths and weaknesses and to communicate to policy makers and other partners the need for maintaining and enhancing current public health infrastructure. The iterative project, supported by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, is advancing incrementally toward learning what we spend as a nation on public health, in a format that transcends organizational boundaries and categorical programs.

To that end, PHF, in concert with NALBOH, ASTHO, and NACCHO and their members, has designed tools for estimating investments in essential services and evaluated the use of these tools in nine states and three diverse localities. Participants in these studies have been receptive to the use of essential services framework in helping them pose policy questions, such as whether the essential services are currently being provided and whether all populations are being reached. Using the lessons learned from the state and local studies, the project team refined the data collection tool and explored in one state (Maryland) collection of essential services expenditures by public health agencies on a statewide basis.

As an adjunct to the ODPHP-funded work around essential services, PHF conducted a study for the Health Resources and Services Administration in 1996 to design and test a methodology for collecting consistent and complete expenditure data on state and local health department personal health services, expanding on the essential service, Link people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of care when otherwise unavailable. The study posed three broad policy questions: Are there shifts among personal health spending categories? Are public health and personal health services being bundled into more comprehensive sets of services? Are health departments delivering those services in different ways structurally? The study produced profiles of five states and local health departments’ efforts to test the tool, contributing to an understanding of the feasibility of reporting sufficiently accurate data from states and localities.

To date, four products have been developed and are available as a result of this ongoing work.

For more information on these projects, please email Ron Bialek.

Advancing Public Health Systems Research

Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice – Public Health Systems Research

The Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice Council (Council), which received staff support from PHF, helped promote public health systems research (PHSR), through yearly forums during the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting. These forums sought to foster collaboration on the best ways to leverage resources to support research related to public health infrastructure. The Council has also help disseminate and generate research agendas on critical public health infrastructure issues.

To learn more about the Council’s efforts related to PHSR, click here or contact Ron Bialek.

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Updated 3-16-08