Starting a Continuous Quality Improvement Project: A Brief for Tribal Home Visiting Grantees

This brief was developed by the Tribal Home Visiting Evaluation Institute (TEI) as a resource for Tribal Home Visiting programs seeking to conduct continuous quality improvement (CQI) projects to strengthen their services.

It synthesizes fundamental CQI information from expert sources and builds on it to be consistent with indigenous ways of knowing and appropriate for tribal community contexts. The brief covers the definition of CQI, how to get started on a CQI project, and how to run a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. It also provides an overview of Tribal Home Visiting grantee improvement project topics and a detailed project example. The brief concludes with a list of additional CQI resources and a glossary of terms used.

The content is based on TEI’s experiences supporting Tribal Home Visiting grantees in conducting CQI in tribal settings. However, the concepts may be applicable to health and human service programs elsewhere, particularly those that are new to CQI.