On November 6-7, Dr. Daniel Xu presented research on collaborative governance in local public health services at the Annual Northeastern Conference for Public Administration.
Abstract: Joint provision and collaborative governance has increasingly been a key strategy for local government to address administrative and fiscal challenges in public service. The research utilizes the data from a recent national survey to test competing hypotheses on the factors associated with the collaborative activities in local public health departments. The factors that it studies include leadership characteristics, organizational and institutional settings as well as budget condition which are commonly believed to be related to the collaborative activities of local government services. An index is developed in the research to measure the extensiveness and depth of collaboration by local health departments. The analysis suggests that both characteristics of individual administrators such as education attainment and prior job experience and institutional settings such as local ownership and organization size are associated with the extent of collaboration in local public health service whereas budget condition appear not a significant predictor. Further research on the topic will need to address data limitations and incorporate alternative theoretical perspectives.