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

The researchers developed 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 implemented CQI through collaboration among the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota and local and state public health agencies. They created a coordinated academic curriculum in CQI, preparing personnel to lead CQI efforts, and they implemented CQI capabilities into eight separate public health agency projects. The objective of this project was to demonstrate that CQI can be used in public health organizations to improve performance of core processes.