Implementing MAPP in the County of San Diego, a Large Local Health Jurisdiction

The County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) is embarking on a journey to improve the quality of life for all San Diegans through its Live Well, San Diego! Initiative. This ten-year transformative strategic initiative includes three pillars: Building Better Health, Living Safely, and Promoting Thriving Families. Each pillar will be implemented through four strategies: building better service delivery systems, creating healthy choices, pursuing policy and environmental changes, and changing the culture within. HHSA recognizes that the Agency alone cannot achieve such an ambitious effort without engaging the community. In order to address health outcomes and their root causes (i.e., social determinants of health), HHSA depends upon public/private partnerships and collaboration with its community partners to achieve community level goals. Upon Board approval of the Building Better Health component of Live Well, San Diego!, the six HHSA Regions began engaging the community through community forums to ensure representation of its diverse population. HHSA later embraced the Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) model to enhance the community engagement actions. This latter approach also supported HHSA's public health accreditation readiness planning and activities. Resulting efforts of the MAPP community engagement process include a Community Health Assessment (CHA) and a comprehensive Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) identifying region-specific priorities and goals. The CHIP goes beyond establishing strategic priorities and goals, but also includes performance measures for its objectives. These measures are collected and monitored to continuously evaluate the Live Well, San Diego! strategic initiative.