The Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County (DOH-Miami-Dade), a unit of the Florida Department of Health (DOH), is the county health department located in Miami, Florida. It provides population and community-based services to the county's 2.7 million residents and close to 16 million annual visitors. DOH-Miami-Dade represents the largest population and budget of the 67 county health departments in the State of Florida and is the second largest health department in terms of the number of employees. DOH-Miami-Dade currently employs approximately 775 staff and has an annual budget of more than $70 million
DOH-Miami-Dade is the lead agency providing core public health (PH) functions and essential services in the county as part of a complex PH system that includes hospitals, clinics, planning agencies, community-based organizations and others. PH is a fundamental element of the quality of life available to residents and visitors in Miami-Dade County and focuses on promoting and protecting community health through prevention and preparedness.
The DOH-Miami-Dade School Health Program is part of the public health system that provides basic school health services to children in all public schools. The services included within this program are: health appraisals, nursing assessments, child specific health trainings, health screenings; vision, scoliosis, hearing and growth and development. The overall goal of the school health program is to ensure that children are healthy in school and ready to learn. DOH-Miami-Dade collaborates with community partners in order to ensure that the mission and objectives of the program are achieved.
The primary focus of the Improving School Health Screening Through Collaborative Efforts practice is to increase the screening rates of students in mandated grades. The purpose of the practice is to ensure that a standardized process is developed and utilized by all school health providers to increase screening rates. The goals of the practice are to have at least 45% of the initial vision, hearing, scoliosis, growth and development screenings conducted by January 31st and at least 95% of the initial vision, hearing, scoliosis, growth and development screenings conducted by March 31st.
The practice was implemented in collaboration with community partners. Key stake holders meet to discuss the issues regarding the health screenings within all public schools which led to the development of a quality improvement project to address the issue. Health screenings calendar and assignment were created by all parties, and data was collected in a timely fashion and submitted to DOH-Miami-Dade.
DOH-Miami-Dade was the responsible agency to collect data from all stakeholders and report it to the State. The DOH-Miami-Dade School Health program communicated frequently with all parties to provide updates on progress toward the target as results were due to the Florida Department of Health School Health Program office by March 2018. In addition, the School Health Program partnered with Nicklaus Children's Hospital, a South Florida non-profit hospital exclusively for children, to provide screenings and provide telehealth services in 62 schools with Miami-Dade County.
As a result of the practice, significant improvements to health screenings were seen based on the increased communication and collaboration between key stakeholders in the community. Great strides were made by key stakeholders to improve the school health services provided and ensure adequate data collection.
The website for the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County is http://miamidade.floridahealth.gov/.