Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Oct;44(5 Pt 2):1818-41.
doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6773.2009.01015.x. Epub 2009 Aug 17.

Toward standardized, comparable public health systems data: a taxonomic description of essential public health work

Jacqueline Merrill  1 , Jonathan Keeling, Kristine Gebbie
Affiliations

Toward standardized, comparable public health systems data: a taxonomic description of essential public health work

Jacqueline Merrill et al. Health Serv Res. 2009 Oct.

Abstract

Objective: To identify taxonomy of task, knowledge, and resources for documenting the work performed in local health departments (LHDs).

Data sources: Secondary data were collected from documents describing public health (PH) practice produced by organizations representing the PH community.

Study design: A multistep consensus-based method was used that included literature review, data extraction, expert opinion, focus group review, and pilot testing.

Data extraction methods: Terms and concepts were manually extracted from documents, consolidated, and evaluated for scope and sufficiency by researchers. An expert panel determined suitability of terms and a hierarchy for classifying them. This work was validated by practitioners and results pilot tested in two LHDs.

Principal findings: The finalized taxonomy was applied to compare a national sample of 11 LHDs. Data were obtained from 1,064 of 1,267 (84 percent) of employees. Frequencies of tasks, knowledge, and resources constitute a profile of PH work. About 70 percent of the correlations between LHD pairs on tasks and knowledge were high (>0.7), suggesting between-department commonalities. On resources only 16 percent of correlations between LHD pairs were high, suggesting a source of performance variability.

Conclusions: A taxonomy of PH work serves as a tool for comparative research and a framework for further development.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A Congruence Model of an Organizational System Adapted from Nadler and Tushman (1988)
Figure 2
Figure 2
Hierarchical Schema for Taxonomy of Public Health Work
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. American Medical Association. Current Procedural Terminology. Chicago: American Medical Association; 2008.
    1. Association of Public Health Laboratories and Public Health Informatics Institute. Requirements Document for Public Health Laboratory Information Management Systems. Washington, DC: Association of Public Health Laboratories; 2003.
    1. Association of Schools of Public Health. “Master's Degree in Public Health Core Competency Development Project, Version 2.3” [accessed on September 2006]. Available at http://www.asph.org/userfiles/version2.3.pdf.
    1. Bazzoli G, Shortell S, Dubbs N, Chan C, Kralovec P. An Organizational Taxonomy of Health Networks and Systems: Bringing Order out of Chaos. Health Services Research. 1999;33(6):1683–717. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bazzoli GJ, Shortell SM, Dubbs NL. Rejoinder to Taxonomy of Health Networks and Systems: A Reassessment. Health Services Research. 2006;41(3, part 1):629–39. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types