The Public Health Memory Jogger II: A Pocket Guide of Tools for Continuous Improvement and Effective Planning

All of us involved in the public health field have the opportunity to make a measurable difference in live of Americans every day. Our mission to protect and improve the public’s health puts us on the front lines for some of society’s toughest problems–like the burden of obesity, health disparities, emerging infectious diseases, and inadequate access to health care. Whether you work out in the field or in policy or academia, your efforts can directly affect the results that matter to your organization and to those you serve.From town halls to the nation’s capital, we collectively have set ambitious health improvement goals codified in Healthy People 2010. The stakes are high for us to deliver measurable results. The Public Health Foundation projects more than two million excess deaths by the end of the decade if communities fail to achieve nine major mortality objectives set forth in the Healthy People 2010 objectives.Achieving such ambitious goals requires that we find new ways to connect our daily work to results. Yet, even with abundant data systems in public health, it can be a challenge to measure whether what we did today is making a difference. Too often, we continue doing what we are doing, too busy with routine demands to take time out to check if it is working or if there is an easier way. Complicating matters, many public health problems are driven by complex systems and social factors that can seem outside of our immediate control.Fortunately, people in many other fields have faced similar challenges and found ways to solve them with quality and innovation methods. That is why the Public Health Foundation is so pleased to partner with GOAL/QPC to make available this handy pocket guide of leading quality, planning, and management tools. The tools in this guide can help and others involved in public health efforts to: • Get better results • Streamline efforts • Increase accountability • Boost morale and teamwork • Improve customer satisfaction • Increase support for public health • Cut costs • Save lives Millions of people world-wide have used the original Memory Jogger II as an on the job reference to help them apply quality improvement techniques to work more effectively with ideas, data, and teams. We hope the many public health examples in this book give you ideas of the many potential applications to our field and your own work.These tools also can be used in conjunction with current performance management and quality improvement efforts already under way, such as the Turning Point or Malcolm Baldridge approaches.Whether you use the tools to achieve incremental changes or major breakthroughs, we hope you will become a contributor of future tools and examples to benefit others in our field.Best wishes on your journey toward better results! Leslie M, Beitsch, MD, JD Board Chair, Public Health Foundation Contents Foreword Acknowledgments How to Use This Book Tool Selector Chart Introduction Activity Network Diagram (AND) • Gantt Chart Affinity Diagram Brainstorming Cause & Effect/Fishbone Diagram Check Sheet Control Chart Data Points Flowchart Force Field Analysis Histogram Interrelationship Diagraph (ID) Matrix Diagram Nominal Group Technique (NGT) • Multivoting Pareto Chart Prioritization Matrices Process Capability Radar Chart Scatter Diagram Team Guidelines • Team Stages • Conducting Effective Meetings Tree Diagram • Process Decision Program Chart (PDPC) Problem-Solving/Process-Improvement Model: Improvement Storyboard