News and Events

Upcoming PHQIX Twitter Chat! Tuesday, May 3, 2015 - Mark your calendars for our next Twitter chat to be held Wednesday, May 11th at 12pm EST! We will be discussing tools, resources, and promising practices in public health quality improvement. It’s easy to join the conversation; just use #QITogether when you tweet!
2016 National Health Security Preparedness Index Results Now Available! Tuesday, April 26 - The 2016 National Health Security Preparedness Index results are now available! Findings from the Index can be used to help address gaps in health security and preparedness across the U.S. The Index is a tool for all in public health, health care, and emergency management. It suggests opportunities for collaboration and partnership to flourish. Together, everyone who wants to improve health, well-being, security, can work together to build a Culture of Health. The Index can be accessed at www.nhspi.org.
QI Innovator Award Winner: Charlotte Marthaler, MS Tuesday, April 19 - It is our pleasure to honor Charlotte Marthaler, from the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department (LDCHD), as a public health QI innovator. Congratulations, Charlotte! What makes Charlotte Marthaler a QI innovator? Charlotte Marthaler has been a public health QI leader for most of her career. As assistant director at LDCHD in Kansas, she supports the director's efforts to move LDCHD forward by providing leadership, analyzing internal policies and procedures, and brainstorming ideas about how to improve health in the community. In this role, Charlotte leads LDCHD's QI efforts; as a result, LDCHD achieved PHAB accreditation in 2015. LDCHD is partnering with Les Beitsch, a PHQIX Expert Panel member, to assess the agency's quality culture and tie together individual QI, program QI, and organizational QI. During a recent training, Les remarked how impressed he was that the LDCHD employee performance appraisal process is so deeply embedded in QI, a credit to Charlotte's work in this area. Charlotte has helped the LDCHD Child Care Licensing and Administrative programs achieve Public Health Model Practice Awards from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). She also helped the Kansas WIC program receive a Promising Practice designation from NACCHO. Charlotte demonstrates leadership, innovation, collaboration, and stewardship of QI in Kansas by serving as a member of the Kansas Public Health Workforce Development Coordinating Council. She also recently served on NACCHO's Performance Improvement Leadership Collaborative. We asked Charlotte to share some insights regarding challenges encountered, lessons learned, and advice about public health QI. Here's what she had to say! Q: Describe one challenge you have encountered in conducting QI in public health and how you worked to overcome that challenge. A: One challenge I’ve encountered is staff hesitancy to use QI tools regularly as an aid to decision making. I’ve found modeling the use of tools in team meetings to be effective. Being proactive and helping match a particular QI tool such as an affinity diagram or control and influence matrix to an identified question has also helped. One-on-one coaching with program managers on the selection and use of specific tools has built confidence. First-hand experience of value has definitely led to greater use of QI tools among health department staff. Q: What is one key lesson you have learned in your experience implementing public health QI initiatives? A: Often QI initiatives start with too broad of an aim statement. I believe this is due to a reluctance to spend the time needed in the planning phase of Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA). It is well worth the time to examine the current process flow in detail, gather baseline measures, and identify the root cause of the problem. Q: What advice would you give to public health practitioners who are new to QI? A: My advice to those who are new to QI is to seek out and make use of the great resources available through PHQIX, NACCHO, and the Public Health Foundation, to name a few. Learning how other public health practitioners have applied QI concepts to their work greatly advances understanding. Congratulations, Charlotte! Thank you for sharing your insights, for your demonstrated leadership in public health QI, and for being a member of the PHQIX community!
New Community Forum Feature! Tuesday, April 12 – Attention PHQIX Users: You can now upload Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, JPG, and PNG files along with your posts to the Community Forum! We would like to encourage our users to take advantage of this feature to share their QI plans, tools, and other resources and materials that QI professionals may find helpful in their work. We hope this new feature will add value to our mission of creating a community and communication hub for public health professionals interested in learning and sharing information about quality improvement (QI) in public health!
PHQIX will be at the Spring 2016 Open Forum! Tuesday, April 5 - PHQIX will be at the National Network of Public Health Institutes' (NNPHI) Spring 2016 Open Forum April 7th & 8th in Indianapolis, IN. If you are planning to attend, stop by the PHQIX booth to network, pick up some great giveaways, and learn more about our honored QI Innovators!
New QI Spotlight Article! Wednesday, March 30 - Check out our latest QI Spotlight article, *Developing and Using SMART Objectives* by PHQIX Expert Panel Member, Gurleen Roberts: “Within the makings of a QI project, once the goal statement is complete defining SMART objectives will help move the idea into action. This transition from planning to action occurs because objectives provide the project with a direction so that a clear process improvement can be planned. The clearer the objectives, the more successful the project will be. This article will explain what a SMART objective is and how to write a SMART objective for your own QI project.” Read the full article here!
New QI Video Highlights Marion County, OR! Tuesday, March 22, 2015 - When a rabies susceptible animal has bitten a human, it is imperative that health departments responsible for the investigation and quarantine of these animals respond a timely manner. Marion County Environmental Health in Oregon used a PDSA approach to reduce the time to process rabies bites reports by 29%, saving about 30 hours each year and improving employee morale in the process. To learn more about their success, check out the video at the bottom of the PHQIX homepage and read more about this QI initiative here!