Deadline:

Dec 16, 2008 - Closed

Program Area:

Public Health

Purpose:

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is committed to increasing the successful application of quality improvement (QI) methods in health departments. We believe that the use of QI will enable local, state, tribal and territorial health departments to improve their performance and their ability to protect, promote and preserve health in the communities they serve. Additionally, in preparation for national public health accreditation, many health departments are looking at QI as a means of improving performance to meet accreditation standards. Currently, however, there is little published evidence on the value and impact of QI in public health, and only preliminary evidence exists about the factors that promote the successful implementation and spread of QI efforts in governmental health departments. 

RWJF seeks to build the evidence regarding the:

• scope and nature of QI efforts in governmental health departments;
• value of QI efforts to improve public health processes, service delivery and health status outcomes;
• QI techniques best suited for different types of processes and outcomes;
• data sources and methods required to evaluate QI efforts;
• barriers that impede health departments’ efforts to apply QI, and the factors that enable the successful application of QI; and
• resources and/or conditions needed for QI efforts to yield meaningful improvements in the delivery and impact of public health services.

The University of Minnesota, School of Public Health is managing this solicitation and seeks proposals from local, state, tribal and territorial health departments to evaluate and document the effects of QI efforts conducted by health departments. All health departments must identify an evaluator, either internal or external to the health department, who will conduct the evaluation. The University of Minnesota will offer assistance in identifying qualified evaluators, if needed, and all selected health departments will be offered technical assistance on designing and implementing their QI efforts and evaluations.

Program Information:

• Call for Proposals

Eligibility & Selection Criteria:

To be eligible for grants provided as part of this solicitation, applicants must:

• be a local, state, tribal or territorial health department in the United States or one of its territories;
• have prior experience in conducting quality improvement processes;
• initiate a new QI project that can be implemented immediately after the grant period begins and completed within one year or have a QI initiative currently in progress that will continue through the first year of the grant award period;
• have a plan for identifying a qualified evaluator or, if a potential evaluator has already been identified, provide a letter of support and curriculum vitae for that evaluator (who may be internal or external to the health department); and
• be willing to publish and present findings to help increase the successful application of QI in health departments across the nation.

Examples of eligible QI efforts include, but are not limited to:

• increasing the efficiency of public health services to lower costs, increase value of services, volume of people served, impact of services and customer satisfaction;
• implementing and assessing the effectiveness of evidence-based practices and approaches to improve the conditions that make people healthier, including prevention activities (e.g., immunizations, increased access to areas for physical activity, reduced exposure to environmental toxins); and/or
• improving health status indices for the populations served by the health department or reducing disparities in health outcomes between different populations in the community.

Potential areas for evaluation include, but are not limited to:

• costs and benefits of implementing the QI effort;
• applicability of different QI methods for different types of targets (e.g., capacity, process or health outcomes);
• health department personnel attitudes towards and knowledge of QI before and after the QI effort;
• stakeholder satisfaction with the QI implementation experience; or
• enabling and limiting factors to the successful application of QI in the health department.

A panel of experts in public health QI and evaluation will review the brief proposals and select a subset to proceed to the full proposal stage. Selection criteria include:

• alignment of ongoing or proposed QI efforts with the definition of QI provided in this CFP;
• degree to which the proposed target area for QI has an indirect or direct link to improving population health status;
• potential for the evaluation of the QI effort to increase understanding of how to successfully apply QI to improve health department processes and outcomes;
• potential for the evaluation of the QI effort to demonstrate the value of QI for increasing the impact of public health services;
• an outline of the evaluation plan and qualifications of evaluator (if the evaluator has been identified); or
• proposed evaluation targets and actions for identifying an evaluator for the project (if the evaluator has not been identified).

Key Dates:

• November 14, 2008 (2:30 p.m. ET)—Informational Web conference call for potential applicants. Download slides or listen to the archive of the conference call. 
• December 16, 2008 (3 p.m. ET)—Deadline for receipt of brief proposals.
• Early February 2009—Applicants notified if invited to submit a full proposal.
• March 4, 2009 (3:00 p.m. ET)—Deadline for receipt of full proposals.
• June 15, 2009—Start of grants.

Total Award:

Approximately 15 to 20 projects of between $120,000 and $160,000 for up to 24 months will be funded through this solicitation. Funds will be awarded directly to the selected health departments.

Contact:

Tim Crowley
info-QIPublicHealth@rwjf.org

Related Materials:

• View Program FAQs