• Ensure organized statewide efforts for personal, educational, and environmental health; provide access to health services; and solve health problems

• Guarantee the availability of a minimum set of health care services

• Support local health care service capacity, especially when disparities in local abilities exist with fiscal, administrative, technical capacity, and direct action

Local Government Responsibilities

• Assess, monitor, and provide surveillance for local health problems and resources with consideration of physical, behavioral, environmental, social, and economic conditions

• Prevent, investigate, minimize, and contain adverse health effects

• Ensure compliance with public health laws and ordinances

• Lead planning and response for public health emergencies

• Develop policy and leadership to engage the community, ensure the equitable distribution of public resources, and develop public-private partnerships to deliver activities commensurate with community needs

• Implement health promotion programs

• Coordinate public health system efforts in an intentional, noncompetitive, and nonduplicative manner

• Address health disparities.

• Ensure that high-quality services for the protection of public health, including personal health care, are accessible to all people; that the community receives proper consideration in the allocation of federal, state, and local resources for public health; and that the community and media are informed about how to obtain public health services

• Serve as a resource to local governing bodies, policy makers, community-based organizations, other governmental agencies, entities engaged in public health issues, and researchers

SOURCES: Adapted from IOM (1988, 2003); NACCHO (2005).