Beyond the Michigan public health accreditation process you have just studied, a national public health accreditation process is available. I am making you the Health Officer of YOUR local health department. Therefore, you should visit the website of the local health department where you have your permanent home address to understand the size, structure, budget and resources of your agency.You have decided that you want to have your agency become nationally accredited.Your assignment is to prepare a document of 1,000-1,500 words. The final submission should include a cover memo from you (with your proper Health Officer title) to the board of health (using your local agencys board name) and attached must be the general discussion paper to provide information to the board on what national accreditation is, why you are proposing it, what it costs, what is the timeline for achieving it, what the advantages and challenges are, what resources are needed (i.e. if you are from a large health department you may be better prepared and better staffed to achieve this than a smaller agency that may need more time or possibly to hire additional staff to accomplish), how well prepared you feel your agency is, and any other information you feel is pertinent. Since this will be your first discussion with the board, you are not asking for board action at this time, merely gauging the boards interest in pursuing further.This is not an academic paper written in any particular format. This is you as a Health Officer writing a professional discussion paper to your board of health. The only minimum requirement is to cover the topics I have listed in the description. Visit the website for the national accreditation process (http://www.phaboard.org) and become thoroughly familiar with whats involved in becoming nationally accredited. Besides various web pages on the accreditation process, the website contains a number of reports under the education tab, plus there is a set of online orientation modules that you can review.
