Peer Assessment

The Peer Assessment Toolkit is to support collaborative efforts to learn from singular events. The peer assessment process is designed to engage public health and other professionals in the analysis of a public health system’s response to an emergency, by identifying root causes of successes and failures, and highlighting lessons that can be institutionalized by the responding public health system and others to improve future responses.

Section 1. Introduction

In the introduction you will find the following information: a definition of peer assessment, a rationale for peer assessment, the intended users of this toolkits, and a glossary of terms.

Section 2. The Peer Assessment Process

In this section, you will find the following information about: peer-assessment major components, initiating a peer-assessment, master activities list, and conducting a peer-assessment.

Section 3. Facilitated Lookback Information

In this section, you will find some information about how to conduct a facilitated lookback for public health emergency preparedness as well as other options for conducting an on-site meeting and root cause analysis.

Section 4. Follow Up and Analysis Report

In this section, you will find some information on what kind of follow-up can be expected after the site visit.

Section 5. Texas West Nile Virus Case Study

After conducting a peer assessment field test, our research team and public health practitioners created this entire case study to serve as an illustration.

• Appendix A. Evidence for Peer Assessment and References
• Appendix B. Requestor Job Action Sheet
• Appendix C. Assessment Team Job Action Sheet
• Appendix D. Sample Meeting Invitation
• Appendix E. Project Funding/Additional Resources