NACCHO's 2010 National Profile of Local Health Departments Study: The Premier Source of Data on Local Health Departments for Surveillance, Research, and Policymaking

The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conducted the sixth National Profile of Local Health Departments study in 2010. NACCHO conducted prior Profile studies in 1989, 1992-1993, 199-1997, 2005, and 2008. The Profile studies collect information on local health department (LHD) jurisdictions and infrastructure, including governance, financing, leaders, workforce and activities. The Profile questionnaire is distributed to every US LHD, defined for the purpose of this study as “an administrative or service unit of local or state government concerned with health and carrying some responsibility for the health ofa jurisdiction smaller than the state.” The purpose of this article is to inform the public health research community, practitioners, and policy-makers about the availability and potential of the Profile study as a rich source of data to support creation of research evidence for practice and policymaking. To provide a sense of kinds of information available from the study, the article includes study results from the 2010 Profile on selected topics—LHD accreditation, aging of the workforce, emergency preparedness, and access to health care.