Sheldon Margen Public Health Library
1 University Hall
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/PUBL/HealthCare.html

Health Care Planning, Organization, and Evaluation Resources

Organizations and Agencies

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (US DHHS)

AHRQ supports research designed to improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost, and broaden access to essential services. Funding opportunities and health care quality assessment information are available as well as the AHRQ Publications Catalog. Many publications are available free on a single-copy basis.

Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Contains ongoing surveys of US households, individuals, medical care providers and employers on their health care costs. Includes data on demographics, health status, health conditions, use of medical services, etc. Users can query the database and get a detailed ASCII file (with related SAS and SPSS programming statements) and a SAS transport dataset. Pdf and html summary files are also available for various data items. Data are available from 1995+ with projections into future years.

National Quality Measures Clearinghouse

NQMC "is a database and Web site for information on specific evidence-based health care quality measures and measure sets." It includes " Structured, standardized abstracts (summaries) containing information about measures and their development; A utility for comparing attributes of two or more quality measures in a side-by-side comparison; and Links to full-text quality measures (when available) and/or ordering details for the full measure."

H-CUPnet

H-CUPnet is an "on-line query system to analyze health statistics and information on hospital stays at the national, regional, and State level. Using HCUPnet's easy step-by-step query system, you can generate tables and graphs on national and regional statistics and trends for community hospitals in the U.S. In addition, community hospital data are available for those States [including California] that have agreed to participate in HCUPnet."

American College of Healthcare Executives

ACHE is an international professional society of healthcare executives, and the publisher of Journal of Healthcare Management and Healthcare Executive.

American Hospital Association

AHA represents hospitals and healthcare networks in matters of national health policy development, legislative and regulatory debates, and judicial matters.

State and Metropolitan Hospital Associations

California Healthcare Association (CHA)

CHA represents the interests of hospitals, health systems and other health care providers in California.

California HealthCare Foundation

"CHCF's work focuses on informing health policy decisions, advancing efficient business practices, improving the quality and efficiency of care delivery, and promoting informed health care and coverage decisions." CHCF offers a daily electronic news briefing, California Healthline, on California and national health policy (requires one-time registration; it is available only to qualifying individuals and organizations in California). Full text of many CHCF publications is available on the web site. The Foundation also provides grants statewide.

California Health Care Safety Net Institute

"The California Health Care Safety Net Institute (SNI) is committed to advancing community health for California's low-income, racially and ethnically diverse populations. SNI examines key community health issues, demonstrates and evaluates innovative strategies, shares best practices, and promotes a broader understanding of the role public hospitals and health systems in promoting community health." SNI's work is concentrated in five areas:

Preventing child injury

Understanding and addressing racial disparities in health care

Preventing violence

Improving systems capabilities

Addressing the oral health needs of children.

SNI is an affiliate of the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems.

California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development

The How to Find Data page has financial, utilization, construction, and other data on California's healthcare infrastructure. California Perspectives in Healthcare "is designed to provide an overview of healthcare facilities and services within California. The publication is divided into sections including one section for each of California's 58 counties and one section for statewide."

California Office of the Patient Advocate

Research and reports here include the HMO Report Card, with information on California's HMO enrollees, language barriers and HMO ratings on asthma, cancer and diabetes among much more.

Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc

"CHCS is a nonprofit, policy resource center that promotes high quality health care services for low-income populations and people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. We achieve this objective by conducting policy analysis, testing model products and providing 'real world' training and technical assistance to our key audiences: purchasers of publicly-financed health care, managed care organizations and consumer groups."

Center for Health Improvement (CHI) (formerly the California Center for Health Improvement)

"CHI's goal is to serve as a catalyst for improving America's health and well being by removing policy-imposed barriers to good health, and enacting policies that encourage healthy behavior. CHI is also committed to disseminating objective, accurate and easy to understand information about prevention to a wide and diverse audience." Numerous documents are available online from their Resources page. The site also includes technical assistance information.

Center for Health and Public Policy Studies

"The Center for Health and Public Policy Studies conducts research and policy analysis on current issues in health policy and politics that affect California and the nation." The Center's activities include the Health Insurance Policy Program, Tobacco Control, California Chartbook Project, California Health Policy Roundtable, Medicaid Managed Care, and Consumers in Managed Care. CHPPS is a part of the UCB School of Public Health.

The State of Health Insurance in California for the years 1996-1999 are among the many publications available for downloading.

Center for Law and the Public's Health (Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities)

The Center works to "Improve understanding about how the law affects the prevention of disease and injury through research, education, training, collaboration, and dissemination of information; and promotes the development and implementation of an effective public health law infrastructure." The site includes model public health laws, checklists on legal preparedness for bioterrorism, and other training information.

Commonwealth Fund

The Commonwealth Fund is a philanthropic foundation charged with enhancing the common good. The Fund's two national program areas are improving health insurance coverage and access to care and improving the quality of health care services. Some full-text online publications are available, including Gaps in Health Insurance: An All-American Problem (PDF document; April 2006) and Medicare's New Adventure: The Part D Drug Benefit (PDF document; March 2006). Other reports cover such subjects as minority health, women's health, and international health policy. For those that are not available online, a free printed copy can be requested.

Community Toolbox (University of Kansas Work Group on Health Promotion and Community Development)

The Tool Box provides over 6,000 pages of practical skill-building information on over 250 different topics. Topic sections include step-by-step instruction, examples, check-lists, and related resources. It has sections on leadership, strategic planning, community assessment, advocacy, grant writing, and evaluation, as well as Best Practices examples and evidence. Tool Box will help with skill building, work planning, and troubleshooting.

Deliver

"DELIVER continues the work of the Family Planning Logistics Management (FPLM) project. FPLM helped establish and maintain improved health logistics systems in more than 30 countries. Fifteen years after FPLM began, DELIVER strengthens health programs logistics around the world to increase the availability of critical health products for customers." DELIVER helps improve logistics systems to ensure availability of contraceptives, vaccines, HIV/AIDS test kits, and more. Their site includes manuals, technical papers, evaluation tools, and other publications.

Guide to Community Preventive Services

This guide is a "set of recommendations for the use or non-use of population-based interventions for a variety of public health topics. The recommendations are based on systematic reviews of scientific evidence of effectiveness." Their recommendations and other publications are available online.

Health Access

Health Access is a broad coalition of over 200 groups including religious organizations, seniors groups, organizations representing people of color, consumer advocacy groups, community organizations and unions, dedicated to achieving quality, affordable health care for all Californians. The site tracks health legislation and provides opportunities for advocacy and action.

Health Systems Resource Centre

"The HSRC works with national, regional and international initiatives in support of health systems capacity to deliver affordable health services to poor people in developing countries," primarily for the Department for International Development UK and its partners. Their publications include toolkits, issue papers, and country health briefing papers.

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation is an independent philanthropy foundation focusing on major health care issues and providing information to policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the general public. Their work is focused in three main areas: Health Policy, Media and Public Education, and Health and Development in South Africa.

Health Care Trends and Indicators in California and the United States (2000) "compares key trends and indicators in California's health care system with those in the rest of the country." The report includes data on health access, trends in health insurance coverage, trends in health care spending, and more.

Kaisernetwork.org is "a free online service that brings health policy information to policymakers, journalists, and the health care community through webcasts, daily news summaries, searchable archives, a national health policy calendar, a public opinion survey database, and other information servcies."

State Health Facts Online contains the latest state-level data on over 200 topics relating to demographics, health, and health policy, including health coverage, access, financing, and state legislation. Data is provided in tables and maps.

International Healthy Cities Foundation and the Coalition for Healthier Cities and Communities in the US

These two organizations, one international and the other US based, provide a place where people interested in addressing urban and community issues along with concerns with health and quality of life issues in their communities can join and share information.

Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)

JCAHO evaluates and accredits health care organizations and programs in the United States. With Quality Check one can retrieve details of an organization's accreditation or look into particular aspects of the evaluation.

National Alliance for Hispanic Health

The National Alliance for Hispanic Health is the oldest and largest network of health and human service providers servicing the over 10 million Hispanic consumers throughout the U.S. "As the nation's action forum for Hispanic health and well-being we strive to inform and mobilize consumers, support health and human service providers in the delivery of quality care, improve the science base for accurate decision making, promote appropriate use of technology, and insure accountability and advocate on behalf of Hispanics."

National Association of County & City Health Officials

Contains model practices in public health as practiced by city and county health officials nationally. Searchable database of successful programs in various areas of public health such as chronic disease, animal control, cultural competence, emergency preparedness, envirommental health, informatics, organizational practices, water quality and more.

National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)

NCQA is non-profit watchdog organization that measures quality of care provided by the nation's managed care organizations. NCQA's Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is a "set of standardized performance measures designed to ensure that purchasers and consumers have the information they need to reliably compare the performance of managed health care plans. The performance measures are related to many significant public health issues such as cancer, heart disease, smoking, asthma and diabetes."

State of Health Care Quality, NCQA's annual report on the nation's health care system, shows that "quality gaps," "factors such as poor use of technology and irrational payment systems, lead to more than 57,000 avoidable deaths each year."

National Cancer Institute

The National Cancer Institute produces several guides for implementing effective programs, including:

The Pink Book: Making Health Communication Programs Work
This book describes a practical approach for planning and implementing health communication efforts; it offers guidelines, not hard and fast rules.

Clear & Simple: Developing Print Materials for Low-Literate Readers
This guide outlines a process for developing publications for people with limited-literacy skills.

National Implementation Research Network

"The mission of the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) is to close the gap between science and service by improving the science and practice of implementation in relation to evidence-based programs and practices." Their web site contains training materials, implementation guides, evaluation resources, reports, and other documents, including Implementation Research: A Synthesis of the Literature (2005)

Outreach Evaluation Resource Center, National Network of Libraries of Medicine

The OERC provides several guides for evaluating outreach programs, including the Planning and Evaluating Health Information Outreach Projects Series. "This 2006 series presents step-by-step planning and evaluation methods. Along with providing information about evaluation, each booklet includes a case study and worksheets to assist with outreach planning. The booklets are designed to supplement Measuring the Difference: Guide to Planning and Evaluating Health Information Outreach and to support evaluation workshops."

Partnership for Prevention

"Partnership for Prevention offers high-quality information about prevention to policymakers such as members of Congress, corporate leaders, state and local health officials, and philanthropies. " The web site includes policy statements and ideas, health promotion material for employers, and numerous other publications.

Healthy Workforce 2010 (pdf file, 2001)

Policy Information Center (US DHHS, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation)

PIC is the central source of information on policy research and evaluations conducted or supported by DHHS. Searches may be conducted by subject category (each with several sub-categories) or by keyword.

PolicyLink: Health

"PolicyLink is a national nonprofit research, communications, capacity building, and advocacy organization working to advance policies to achieve economic and social equity." Their site includes publications, tools, and project information relating to reducing health disparities and community involvement.

The Influence of Community Factors on Health: An Annotated Bibliography (2004) contains summaries of over 150 articles, reports, and books on how environmental, social, and economic conditions of community life affect health.

Prevention Institute

"Prevention Institute is a non-profit national center dedicated to improving community health and well-being by building momentum for effective primary prevention." The site includes tools on coalition building and improving collaborations, and numerous publications on PI's efforts in violence prevention, nutrition and physical activity, gender, environment, and more. PI offers staff training, consulatation, and technical assistance.

RAND

"RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis." Focus areas include child policy, environment and energy, health, international policy, population and regional studies, and social welfare.

Public Health Preparedness in California: Lessons Learned from Seven Health Jurisdictions (RAND Corp., 2004)

This Rand report assesses gaps in California's public health infrastructure, beginning with an assessment of preparedness for a public health emergency. The study makes several findings and recommendations regarding redundancies, jurisdictional issues, and costs.

Turning Point

"Turning Point's underlying philosophy is that public health agencies and their partners can be strengthened by linking to other sectors (not just the private health care sector, but education, criminal justice, faith communities, business, and others) because the underlying causes of poor health and quality of life are tied closely to social issues that are too complex to be approached by disease models of intervention." The site provides resource guides, such as Social Marketing: A Resource Guide (pdf file), information of public health statute modernization, leadership development, and more.

The Performance Management Collaborative aimed to develop useful and feasible performance management models for states. It created a performance management toolkit, a compilation of tools and documents illustrating the many ways that public health agencies manage performance.

UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

The Center conducts research on national, state, and local health policy issues, focusing on the health needs of communities and populations that are at risk for adverse health conditions or are underserved by the health system, provides public service to policy makers and community leaders, and offers educational opportunities for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Their web site includes many publications and data.

The State of Health Insurance in California: Findings from the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (PDF document; June 2002)

Advancing Universal Health Insurance Coverage in Alameda County: Results of the County of Alameda Uninsured Survey (PDF document; September 2001)

United Way's Outcome Measurement Resource Network

The Resource Network offers information, downloadable documents, and links to resources related to the identification and measurement of program- and community-level outcomes.