The call for abstracts for NACCHO Annual 2018, to be held July 10-12, 2018 in New Orleans, LA, is now open. This year’s theme is “Unleashing the Power of Local Public Health.” The conference provides attendees the opportunity to share the latest research and ideas, network, and test their assumptions about the issues and topics that specifically concern their organizations. Conference tracks include:

• Track 1: Public Health Law and Policy: LHDs play key roles in developing policies, plans and public health laws, ordinances, regulations and statutes that protect and support individual and community health.
• Track 2: Leadership, Management and Workforce Development: Local public health needs a strong, functional, and effective operational infrastructure that is nimble and viable to carry out the role of local public health governance in their communities and able to support public health functions. It is also critical that local Health Officials and their LHDs maintain governance, the capacity to carry out the role of local public health governing entity in the community. Assuring a competent Workforce is an ongoing challenge for LHDs faced with reduced budgets, resources, fewer employees, increased workload and ever changing public health threats. Recruiting, retaining, and managing competent, knowledgeable employees willing to work in public health is more difficult than ever for all of our LHDs.
• Track 3: Behavioral Health (Substance Abuse, Mental Health, Violence Prevention): In this track, we will focus on addressing health Issues such as substance abuse, mental health and violence prevention. LHDs may evaluate the impact on their jurisdiction and collaborate with community partners in a thoughtful data driven response.
• Track 4: Health Equity: Health Equity is a main goal among LHDs as we strive to ensure everyone has the opportunity to reach their highest level of health. LHDs must study and evaluate the differences in the quality of healthcare opportunities among various populations to determine the cause for health disparities and health inequality.
• Track 5: Healthy Populations and Communities (Chronic Disease, Infectious Disease & Resilience): Local health departments today must make strategic alliances with traditional and non-traditional partners and stakeholders that hold the power, influence and resources to accomplish real change in order to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and population health. Submissions in this track should focus on how to build a broad base of public and private support and constituencies that can contribute knowledge, connections, resources and financial support to further enhance population health for all.
• Track 6: Addressing the Social Determinates of Health Through Partnerships: In a day and age of challenging health issues, LHDs, the public at large, and community partners must work together to address, educate and empower individuals to help them to prevent or reduce the impact of social issues on health and the health of their community.

Create an account and start your submission today! The abstract submission deadline is January 17, 2018 at 5:00pm EST. If you have any questions, please contact Maeve Carey at [email protected]