An Academic Health Center and Public Health Practice Collaboration: Disseminating Continuous Quality Improvement Capability to Local and State Public Health Agencies

The researchers will develop a pilot program to expand the use of continuous quality improvement (CQI) principles to public health agencies, with a focus on reducing health disparities. They intend to implement CQI through collaboration among the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota and local and state public health agencies. They will create a coordinated academic curriculum in CQI, preparing personnel to lead CQI efforts, and they would implement CQI capabilities into eight separate public health agency projects. The objective of this project is to demonstrate that CQI can be used in public health organizations to improve performance of core processes.