The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is the professional organization for the 2,700 local health departments in the United States [9].
‘‘NACCHO’s mission is to be a leader, partner, catalyst, and voice for local health departments in order to ensure the conditions that promote health and equity, combat disease, and improve the quality and length of all lives’’ [10]. NACCHO has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop an ‘‘operational definition’’ to which all local public health entities might at least concur. Additionally, a new effort is afoot toward providing the more fully functional local public health departments the opportunity to seek accreditation as a means of
validating their meeting or excelling in a defined set of performance standards [8].