LI Course
CE Hours: 3 contact hours

Partnership: N/A

Statement of Purpose and Institute Overview: The purpose of this institute is to equip local government health executives with strategies to implement policy, systems and environmental change to prevent chronic disease within their own agencies, within their community, and across governmental sectors. Three leaders from the County of San Diego – the Health and Human Services Agency Director, the Public Health Officer, and the Chronic Disease and Health Disparities Manager, will demonstrate how they are addressing the root causes of chronic disease by developing and implementing a comprehensive strategy that fundamentally shifted their governmental practices. They will highlight strategies, challenges, and lessons learned to achieve a system-wide approach to preventing chronic disease. Public Health Officer Wilma Wooten will demonstrate how to build political will and how to establish public-private partnerships to comprehensively address obesity prevention through the creation of the countywide Childhood Obesity Action Plan in 2006. This plan was unanimously supported and funded by the County Board of Supervisors. She will demonstrate how the creation of a Chronic Disease Agenda Initiative in 2008 adopted a strategic Place Matters approach to best utilize limited resources to reduce chronic disease and health disparities. She will share how the agency built capacity and integrated their workforce to implement the initiative. Tracy Delaney, the Chronic Disease and Health Disparities Manager, who is also the Director for Healthy Works, San Diego’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program, will then highlight how these multi-pronged strategies created an effective state of readiness in responding to the extraordinary CPPW funding opportunity. The CPPW award provided unique opportunities for systems, policy, and environmental change; participants will learn how the experiences of San Diego’s CPPW program could translate to their own agencies. The Director of the Health and Human Services Agency, Nick Macchione, will then highlight how the development of a 10-year vision for improving community health and quality of life – the County’s innovative Live Well, San Diego!, “Building Better Health,” Initiative – is a transformational approach to improve health throughout all county departments and throughout the community. The Building Better Health Initiative includes a Prevention Goal which has transformed County organizational and staffing resources to address chronic disease prevention efforts. After providing an overview of how the Agenda will be implemented, Director Nick Macchione will lead an interactive exercise to equip local health executives with strategies and tools to achieve a system-wide approach to building better health.

Session Objectives: 1. Identify three strategies within your agency to shift strategic operations to policy, environmental, and systems change. 2. Describe three factors that can position your local government for funding to implement policy, environmental, and systems change. 3. Describe two approaches to gain buy-in within local government departments and maximize collaboration to seamlessly implement a vision for better health across government departments.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)