Accreditation & Programmatic Connections

Considerable work has been done to identify and build connections between Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) standards and public health programs, key initiatives, and emerging topics of interest to the public health community. CDC frequently plays a vital role in these explorations by leading the efforts, drawing on subject matter expertise from across CDC, or supporting PHAB in convening topic-specific think tanks and expert panels. In many cases, these efforts have informed updates to the national standards or resulted in resources summarizing the key linkages.

CDC articles and resources highlighting these connections include the following:

• Driving Change and Reinforcing Expectations by Linking Accreditation With Programmatic and Strategic Priorities
  Provides an overview of numerous crosswalks and alignment documents that help to answer questions such as “How do accreditation standards relate to programmatic work?” and “How does accreditation connect with the many existing and emerging national initiatives or frameworks?”
• Crosswalk of the Public Health Accreditation Board’s (PHAB) Standards and Measures and CDC’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities
  Designed to help public health preparedness and accreditation staff quickly identify direct and indirect connections between accreditation standards and the preparedness and response capabilities
• Healthcare-Associated Infections/Antibiotic Resistance (HAI/AR) and Accreditation Crosswalk
  Highlights potential linkages between healthcare-associated infection and antibiotic resistance program activities and PHAB accreditation standards and measures for health departments
• Community Guide–Public Health Accreditation Board Standards Crosswalk (1.5)
  Helps health departments identify evidence-based interventions from The Community Guide whose implementation could help document conformity with PHAB standards and measures
• Public Health Accreditation and Prevention Status Reports (PSR) Crosswalk
  Serves as a resource for health departments working to meet national accreditation standards and for departments considering the path to accreditation. The PSRs can play a valuable role in
  • Providing and highlighting federal data for consideration in data-driven efforts
  • Pinpointing opportunities for action
  • Exploring and developing new policies
• Environmental Health and Accreditation
  Three commentaries summarize activities to explore and enhance the key linkages between accreditation and environmental health:
  1. Public Health Department Accreditation and Environmental Public Health:  A Decade of Collaboration  (February 2020) [PDF-508KB]
  2. Public Health Department Accreditation and Environmental Public Health: Sustaining the Collaboration (August 2013) [PDF-219KB]
  3. Public Health Department Accreditation and Environmental Public Health: A Logical Collaboration (October 2011)  [PDF-290KB]