title: Using quality improvement methods to improve public health emergency preparedness: PREPARE for Pandemic Influenza.
abstract: Many public health departments seek to improve their capability to respond to large-scale events such as an influenza pandemic. Quality improvement (QI), a structured approach to improving performance, has not been widely applied in public health. We developed and tested a pilot QI collaborative to explore whether QI could help public health departments improve their pandemic preparedness. We demonstrated that this is a promising model for improving public health preparedness and may be useful for improving public health performance overall. Further efforts are needed, however, to encourage the robust implementation of QI in public health.
authors.affiliation: RAND in Santa Monica, California, USA. Lotstein@rand.org
authors.forename: Debra
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lotstein
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Seid
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ricci
authors.forename: Kristin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Leuschner
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Margolis
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lurie
mesh_terms: D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000517:prevention & control*; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011635:Public Health Administration / Q000592:standards; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D014481:United States