Broward County Health Department receives a Model Practice Award at NACCHO Annual 2015

NACCHO’s Model Practice and Promising Practice awards recognize local health departments’ innovative programs, resources, administrative practices, or tools that demonstrate exemplary and replicable qualities in response to a local public health need. A model practice meets the following criteria: local health department role, collaboration, innovation, responsiveness, and evaluation of both the process and outcome. A promising practice exhibits the potential to become a model practice.

In 2015, 19 public health programs received the Model Practice award and 26 programs received the Promising practice award out of 68 applicants. These programs were reviewed by a committee of other local health department professionals. Visit NACCHO’s Model Practices Database to see a full list of this year’s winners and previous model and promising practices. The Model Practices Database is an excellent resource for finding proven ideas, sharing feedback on model and promising practices, and submitting your own idea.

Select 2015 infectious disease-related model and promising practices include the following:

Broward County Health Department (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Utilizing Incident Command to Address Congenital Syphilis in Broward County, Florida (Model Practice)
The Florida Department of Health in Broward County activated an incident command team to conduct targeted epidemiological investigation and study, including retrospective analysis; implement continuous quality improvements to STD program activities; manage internal and external strike teams; recruit and train a competent STD program staff; develop and implement a social marketing campaign; conduct provider and community outreach and education; and monitor the effectiveness of mitigation strategies and campaign activities. The Incident Command System provided an effective structure to manage, track, document, and evaluate a non-emergency response.

Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health (Minneapolis, MN)
Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Program within an STD Clinic: An Innovative HIV Prevention Approach for MSM (Model Practice)
The Hennepin County Public Health Clinic Red Door Services added pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to their current program structure of existing HIV prevention efforts with an emphasis toward serving high risk men who have sex with men (MSM). The program’s objective was to serve 60 clients, regardless of medical insurance status, in a 12 month period. The program has met and exceeded this objective by completing 168 PrEP assessments in a 17 month period with 114 currently enrolled patients.

Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (Champaign, IL)
No Arm Left Behind: A Hospital-Local Health Department Partnership to Provide Free School Physicals and Immunizations to the Underserved (Promising Practice)
The Champaign-Urbana Public Health District has been working with the Carle Family Medicine Residency Program to provide school physicals and immunization clinics since 2012. These special clinics provide free physical exams and dental exams to all children, and Tdap and other immunizations are billed to Medicaid or available for the uninsured and underinsured for a small fee. The establishment of this clinic was to provide options for low-income children to get the back-to-school health examinations required by Illinois law.

Nassau County Department of Health (Mineola, NY)
TB Track (Promising Practice)
Tuberculosis (TB) is responsible for nearly two million deaths worldwide each year and in 2012, the rate of TB in Nassau County was 2.7/100,000 versus 1.9/100,000 statewide. The Nassau County Department of Health (NCDOH) conducts contact investigations for each TB index case to identify those potentially exposed and ensure that each contact receives medical evaluation, and if necessary, treatment. Consequently, NCDOH created an innovative tool for tracking and monitoring contacts. The goal was to develop a tool that would facilitate tracking contacts in large-scale contact investigations to control the spread of TB while still interfacing with the existing reporting system on the New York State Health Commerce System. TB Track was developed in September 2013 and successfully applied to a large-scale contact investigation of nearly 350 contacts from November 2013 to June 2014.

Rockland County Department of Health (Pomona, NY)
In the Spirit of Collaboration: An Innovative Approach to Conducting NeoNatal Herpes Investigation (Promising Practice)
The Rockland County Department of Health developed an unique approach to investigating cases of neonatal herpes through the use of community collaboration, sound applied public health practices, and an innovative laboratory methodology for Herpes Simplex 1 strain analysis. See more in NACCHO’s story from the field.

Does your local health department have a model or promising practice that you would like to share? NACCHO will begin accepting applications for 2016 Model Practices in October. Stay tuned to http://naccho.org/topics/modelpractices/ for more information.