THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION,
Noting that the following national professional organizations: The American Public Health Association (APHA), the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), the National Association of Local Boards of Health (NALBOH), the Public Health Foundation (PHF), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Mental Health Statistics Improvement Program of SAMHSA, the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, and workgroups of the Center for Mental Health Services and the National Institute of Mental Health, are leading an effort to improve public health infrastructure by developing governance and local-state-level performance measures as part of the National Public Health Performance Standards Program (NPHPSP); and
Noting that these joint measures are based on the core functions of public health and the ten Essential Public Health Services outlined in “Public Health in America;”1 and
Further recognizing that the assessment of these functions will depend on the Healthy People 2010 objectives in each disability area; and
Recognizing that the first goal of the NPHPSP is to promote quality improvement by defining best practices and becoming an impetus for action; and
Recognizing that the second goal of the NPHPSP is to improve by accountability by providing performance expectations and providing data for benchmarking; and
Recognizing that the third goal of the NPHPSP is to build a scientific basis for public health practice that can be used for better decision-making, useful comparative data for evaluation, and advocating for public health resources and partnerships; and
Acknowledging that there is a need for specialized and appropriate quality management standards and performance indicators for mental health services as noted in the recommendations of the Surgeon General's Report on mental illness; and
Aware that the Healthy People 20102 contains Objectives 23-12: (Developmental) Increase the proportion of state and local public health agencies that meet national performance standards for essential public health services; and
Aware that this joint collaborative development process with local, state, and governance input assures that all performance measures address and promote the same goals and concepts; and
Aware that in June 1999, after the unveiling of the program at the NPHPSP Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked its partner organizations to formally endorse the NPHPSP tenets; therefore
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