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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Accredited Health Department List

Supplier
Public Health Accreditation Board
Years Available
2013 to present
Periodicity
Annual
Mode of Collection
Census: collection of information from all possible events and entities being reviewed.
Description
The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) is the national nonprofit organization that accredits tribal, toba, local, and territorial governmental public health agencies. The goal of this voluntary program is to improve and protect the health of the public by advancing and transforming the quality and performance of public health departments. PHAB, with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has established national consensus standards for public health agencies. Public health agencies that apply for accreditation must submit documentation to demonstrate conformity with a series of standards that address the 10 Essential Public Health Services. Their documentation is reviewed by a team of peers who also conduct an in-person site visit and develop a report. The PHAB Accreditation Committee reviews the reports and determines whether to accredit applicant health departments. A PHAB-accredited public health department is accredited for five years. When initial accreditation expires, the health department must apply for, and successfully complete, the reaccreditation process in order to maintain accreditation status. While the standards are the same as those in initial accreditation, the reaccreditation requirements are different and fewer and are designed to assess continuous improvement. Reaccreditation also requires health departments to report on population health outcomes, which will help to inform and document the evidence for how accreditation contributes to changes in health outcomes.
Selected Content
Number and names of accredited state, local, tribal, and territorial public health departments.
Population Covered
Tribal, state, local, and territorial governmental public health agencies.
Methodology
The Public Health Accreditation Board is the only organization in the United States to award national public health agency accreditation. The PHAB Accreditation Committee makes a determination about accreditation status following a peer-review process through which health departments are assessed for their conformity against a set of consensus Standards and Measures. Each time the PHAB Accreditation Committee meets and confers accreditation, PHAB records the names of the health departments that have current accreditation status, as of the time of reporting. This includes public health agencies that have achieved initial accreditation and those that have maintained their accreditation through the reaccreditation process.
Response Rates and Sample Size
Because this data source is a complete count of accredited public health agencies, the response rate is 100%. PHAB provides the names of accredited sites which serves as the numerator and the denominator is the total number of health departments. For state public health agencies, the denominator is 51 (50 states and the District of Columbia). For local public health agencies, a denominator of 2,309 was collectively identified by the CDC, the National Association of County & City Health Officials, and PHAB. The number of local eligible public health agencies is a list of possible applicants to PHAB from each state and is based on the likely unit of applicant. This denominator will be monitored and may be adjusted over time, as changes in public health structures occur or new plans develop for application processes to PHAB. The sample size is not available for tribal public health agencies. While there are estimates of the number of tribal public health agencies in this country, those estimates are less well-established in the literature. For that reason, the Healthy People 2030 objective using tribal data is a count.
References