摘要：A national public health department accreditation program was recently developed and implemented by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) to improve the quality and performance of public health departments. Because of its potential to transform public health, it is critical that the evidence base around accreditation be strong. With input from public health practitioners and researchers, PHAB developed a research agenda that highlights priority questions related to barriers and facilitators to seeking and obtaining accreditation, the PHAB standards and review process, metrics to determine the impact of accreditation, and benefits and outcomes associated with accreditation for the departments that undergo the process. We present that agenda, discuss the potential challenges of conducting accreditation research, and call on researchers to build a greater base of evidence related to accreditation. The national voluntary public health department accreditation program, which is administered by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), seeks to advance the quality and performance of tribal, state, local, and territorial public health departments. 1,2 Because of its potential to transform public health, it is critical that the accreditation program has a firm grounding in evidence. 3 From the outset, PHAB established a research and evaluation committee, demonstrating recognition of the critical need to promote accreditation-related research. After providing background information about PHAB, we present a public health accreditation research agenda and describe the process by which the agenda was developed. We then discuss potential challenges with conducting research on accreditation and related efforts to understand the impact of accreditation. We conclude with a call to the public health services and systems research (PHSSR) field to help build the evidence base related to accreditation.
