Program Development for the American College of Preventive Medicine, Washington, DC, USA.
This article focuses on how a national system of measuring public health performance can help enhance accountability for public health. It describes the trend toward increased accountability in public health; provides an overview of the issues and challenges public health practitioners face in demonstrating how the resources they spend and programs they operate contribute to improved community health status and suggests how the results of participating in the National Public Health Performance Standards Program can help.