Turkey has been exhibiting a healthy economy, driven by government incentive programs and initiatives supporting public-private partnerships. These programs and initiatives have been key in sustaining growth in Turkey and supporting a better economic environment compared to the EU average.

In the absence of validated national benchmarks, or norms, this document stresses the need for each community paramedicine program to define its system-specific health status benchmarks and performance indicators and to use a variety of community health and public health interventions to improve the community's health status. The document also addresses reducing the burden of illness, chronic disease, and injury as a community-wide public health problem, not strictly as a patient care issue. Opportunities to review community paramedicine programs are beneficial because they allow for the assessment of the status of EMS activities and move systems forward in developing inclusive and comprehensive systems of care. Many EMS programs conduct their own internal or external reviews, and it is hoped that this document will serve as another tool used by these programs to assess the current status of community paramedicine programs and to provide guidance on future system enhancements. The assessment tool also provides a common framework by which data can be collected from multiple community paramedicine programs and aggregated to develop a snapshot of common successes and challenges. While the tool should be useful across both urban and rural programs it is specifically designed to address rural settings where community health/public health resources are often very limited. By encouraging emerging rural community paramedicine programs to use this evaluation framework as a planning tool, it should be possible to create stronger partnerships and linkages with scarce rural resources.

The Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) Program evaluated employees' exposure to lead when working in the parking garage adjacent to the firing range of a police department.

No abstract available.

The HHE Program evaluated employee concerns about exposures and health problems at a tire manufacturing plant. After evaluating the ventilation system, investigators determined that the general and local exhaust systems were operating properly. 

NORC at the University of Chicago is pleased to submit this final report for Assessing the Status and Prospects of State and Local Health Department Information Technology Infrastructure, a project of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. NORC and ASPE worked in close partnership with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). This report describes how state health agencies (SHAs) and local health departments (LHDs) use information technology systems to capture, manage, analyze, and report information. We assess trends in use of information technology (IT) among SHAs and LHDs following the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, recent work in public health informatics, and other factors. This project assumes that IT tools and resources should play a role in governmental public health practice. However, we also assume that rigorous assessments of public health goals should motivate IT projects and that stakeholders should design and implement IT in direct service of those goals.

According to CDC data, racial and ethnic minorities in the United States--particularly Blacks/African-Americans and Hispanics/Latinos--have been disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, representing 72 percent of new HIV infections and 74 percent of all AIDS diagnoses in 2011. In addition to core funding programs through CDC and HRSA that are intended to provide services to all qualifying individuals affected by HIV/AIDS, MAI seeks to improve HIV-related health outcomes and reduce health disparities for minority communities through the provision of grant funds. MAI grants are distributed to a variety of entities. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 required GAO to (1) examine the services provided, population served, and administrative challenges faced by MAI grantees, and (2) describe the best practices identified by grantees and other stakeholders for community outreach and capacity building. GAO conducted a review of services reported in fiscal year 2011 MAI grantee annual reports from a generalizable sample of 100 grantees, and interviewed agency officials and other stakeholders. GAO also reviewed grant administrative requirements, and data on MAI grant amounts and populations served.