Health Department earns Re-Accreditation with Honors

The Harnett County Health Department was awarded reaccreditation with honors status by the North Carolina Local Health Department Accreditation (NCLHDA) Board. The recognition signifies that the Harnett County Health Department excelled in its recent accreditation assessment along with meeting a legislatively mandated set of performance standards. 

Accreditation with honors designation was implemented to recognize agencies that excelled in their accreditation assessment by missing one or less activities within each of five standards set by the NCLHDA program. The Harnett County Health Department met the standards in 147 of 147 activities. The process of accreditation includes three major components a self-assessment completed by the agency, a site visit by a multidisciplinary team of peers to review performance standards, and determination of accreditation status by an independent Accreditation Board comprised of state and local public health officials, Board of Health members, County Commissioners, and public members.

North Carolina is the first state in the country to mandate accreditation for its local health departments and the Harnett County Health Department has been accredited since 2004. Re-accreditation usually takes place every four years but was extended to six years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The purpose of the accreditation program is to assure a basic level of capacity and services in each of the local health departments across the state.  The NC Local Health Department Accreditation program is a collaboration of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health (part of the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and the North Carolina Association of Local Health Directors.