Performance Improvement Will Become Endemic to Human Performance Issues

ardworking public health professionals have been helping health care providers improve their performance and the quality of care they deliver for decades. So it would be foolish to claim that performance improvement in international public health is a new idea. Only five years have passed, however, since a customized version of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) human performance technology (HPT) model was introduced to improve public health in developing coun-tries. Is it possible to have historical perspective after only five years? Perhaps not. But by looking at the many projects completed and under way, we can speculate about what lies ahead for HPT (called simply performance improvement in our community) in the places we work. As one of the few people in our field with performance improve-ment in his or her job title, I have the good fortune to participate in many discussions about PI and the challenges and experiences we encounter using these approaches in developing countries. Drawing on this collaboration and more direct input from other colleagues, I’d like to be so bold as to make some predictions for the future of performance improvement in developing country public health. I think performance improvement use will become ubiquitous, more flexible, more inclusive of other approaches, and more comprehensive in looking at performer support systems