Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Tool To Cost Environmental Health Services In North Carolina Local Health Departments, Nancy L. Winterbauer, Simone Singh, Ashley Tucker, Lisa M. Harrison

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

Introduction: The cost of providing a basic set of public health services necessary not been well-described. Recent work suggests public health practitioners are unlikely to have the empirically-based financing information necessary to make informed decisions regarding practice. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a costing tool used to collect primary data on the number of services provided, staff employed, and costs incurred for two types of mandated environmental health services: food and lodging inspections and onsite water services.

Methods: The tool was iteratively reviewed, revised, and piloted with local health department (LHD) environmental health and …

Evidence For The Role Of Resource-Sharing Networks In Coalition Development, Margaret Mcgladrey, Angela Carman Drph

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

Background: Accreditation bodies and sponsors of community health projects increasingly require the use of health coalitions in community health planning efforts to ensure buy-in, leverage resources, and distribute health information. Despite a substantive body of research documenting the characteristics of successful health coalitions, little is known about how team dynamics in these coalitions evolve.

Purpose: The goal of this study was to employ social network analysis techniques to evaluate whether coalitions’ relative stages in Tuckman’s stages of team development model were associated with specific patterns of advice-, information-, and resource-sharing among the eight coalitions participating in a region-wide …

A State-Level Analysis Of Maternal And Child Health Partnerships Among Indiana Local Health Departments, Priscilla A. Barnes, Laura T. Haderxhanaj, Gulzar H. Shah

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

Background: As one of many organizations within a system of networks, numerous U.S. local health departments (LHDs) use partnerships as a structural intervention to address physical, mental, social concerns of women and infants.

Purpose: This state level study examines current levels of maternal and child partnerships among Indiana LHDs and sectors in the public health system. Geography and organizational readiness (infant mortality listed as a goal in the strategic plan) were used as proxy measures to examine how likely LHDs work with these sectors.

Methods: An eighteen-item online survey was administered to 93 LHDs collected between March and June 2014. …