National Association of County and City Health Officials
Formation | 1960s |
---|---|
Purpose | Population health |
Headquarters | Washington, DC, United States |
Membership | 2,800 local health departments |
Website |
www |
The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is the Washington, DC-based organization representing 2,800 local public health departments in the U.S. These city, county, metropolitan, district, and tribal departments work to protect and promote health and well-being for all people in their communities by coordinating programs and services that make it easier for people to be healthy and safe from public health emergencies.
Purpose
NACCHO provides leadership, up-to-date information, subject matter expertise, and other resources to strengthen local health departments’ program work in a wide array of public health and safety areas including the following:
- Community Health topics such as chronic disease prevention, tobacco control, health and disability, infectious disease prevention and control, immunization, injury prevention, maternal and child health, adolescent health, and health equity.
- Environmental Health topics such as the public health effects of climate change, food safety, environmental health tracking and assessment, and environmental justice.
- Public Health Infrastructure and Systems topics such as: accreditation and quality improvement, community health status indicators, public health informatics, performance standards, public health law, and regionalization of public health services.
- Public Health Preparedness topics such as local readiness for pandemic influenza, Medical Reserve Corps, Project Public Health Ready, and Strategic National Stockpile.
Local health departments look to NACCHO for the following:
- Grant assistance for emergency preparedness, food safety, HIV/AIDS prevention, and other programmatic work taking place at the local level. Resources and easy-to-use tools in many subject areas, including accreditation, epidemiology, healthy community design, influenza, emergency preparedness, and quality improvement.
- Regional and national training courses, meetings and conferences that help local health department staff connect to and learn from one another.
- Access to marketing and branding materials, such as the public health logo, that can help them raise the visibility and perceived value of governmental public health. Local health departments are encouraged to use the public health logo in their own communities to link their work to other health departments across the country.
- Advocacy with federal policymakers about the importance of allocating adequate resources for local public health; passage of sound public health legislation, and support of sensible policies to address the myriad of health challenges facing communities.
Vision
Health, equity, and security for all people in their communities
Mission
To be a leader, partner, catalyst, and voice for local public health departments.
History
The history of NACCHO dates back to the 1960s, with the formation of the National Association of County Health Officials (NACHO), an independent affiliate of the National Association of Counties. As the U.S. federal, state, and local public health systems continued to expand, NACHO combined with the U.S. Conference of Local Health Officers, an organization affiliated with the United States Conference of Mayors, to form the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) in 1994. This unified organization more closely represents all governmental local health departments, including counties, cities, city/counties, districts, and townships. In 2001, NACCHO expanded its scope to include tribal public health agencies serving tribal communities on reservation lands and in 2012 to include counties and cities in the U.S. territories. Today, active membership in NACCHO continues to grow with about 1,500 local health departments.
Governance
NACCHO is governed by a 27-member Board of Directors composed of health officials from around the country elected by their peers, a representative for Tribal health departments, and ex officio members representing the National Association of Counties, of which NACCHO is an affiliate, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The Board of Directors meets four times a year. The NACCHO Executive Committee includes four NACCHO officers and three Board members representing different geographic regions and population size. Approximately 380 NACCHO members serve on 40 committees and workgroups. Most committees meet by conference call and have one face-to-face meeting each year
Executive Director
LaMar Hasbrouck, MD, MPH is the Executive Director for the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) in Washington, DC, the nation’s only association representing the 2,800 local health departments across the United States.[1] As the Executive Director, Dr. Hasbrouck is responsible for leading the association’s mission as leader, partner, catalyst, and voice for local health departments in order to ensure the conditions that promote health and equity, combat disease, and improve the quality and length of all lives.
Previously, Dr. Hasbrouck was the “Top Doc” for Illinois where he managed the public health agency with approximately 1,200 staff, 200 programs, and an annual budget of $600M. He also supported nearly 100 local health departments that worked to protect the health and improve the lives of the state's 13 million residents. Among Hasbrouck's achievements as the state’s health director included implementing the Affordable Care Act, achieving national accreditation, and developing statewide blueprints for health workforce expansion and population health-healthcare integration.
A recognized leader in public health, Dr. Hasbrouck’s is one of only a few public health leaders nationally that have led at every tier of the governmental public health enterprise: local, state, federal, and global. His career accomplishments include serving as the only county official in New York State to simultaneously lead both the public health and mental health departments. He spent eleven years with the CDC, served as country director for CDC’s office in Guyana, South America, and was actively engaged in two of the largest global health initiatives in history: polio eradication and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Dr. Hasbrouck served on faculties of medicine and public health at Emory University, Morehouse College, New York Medical College, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a Diplomat with the American Board of Internal Medicine, a former Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the CDC, and Primary Care Health Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Heath Resources and Services Administration. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his governmental and non-governmental work and was recently recognized as one of 24 “Top Blacks in Healthcare” by blackdoctor.org and the Johns Hopkins Center for Disparities Solutions. Dr. Hasbrouck is a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley, UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, UCLA School of Medicine (Drew-UCLA Medical Education Program), where he was a Dean’s Scholar, and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s Internal Medicine Residency Program. He is the author of “G Street Lion: Stalking a Dream,” a memoir that chronicles how he fought long odds, naysayers, and his own self-doubts to become a dream catcher.