Healthy Alaskans in Healthy Communities: A Cross Jurisdictional Collaboration to Improve Health Outcomes

This session will provide information on ways to enhance cross jurisdictional collaboration to improve public health performance, identify public health priorities, set performance improvement targets, and to increase commitment among partners and stakeholders to undertake shared public health objectives. The experience of cross jurisdictional collaboration in the state of Alaska will be used as a case study to exemplify and describe the steps taken to achieve a successful partnership. By leveraging resources made available through CDC's National Public Health Improvement Initiative, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) and State of Alaska (SOA) have aligned activities to conduct a statewide health assessment utilizing the Healthy People 2020 framework. Information will be shared on why and how the collaboration was formed, the role of leadership, the working structure, and opportunities and challenges encountered. The model presented and lessons learned will be useful for other agencies aiming to establish cross jurisdiction collaborations to address health outcomes and disparities, particularly those interested in increasing collaborations between tribal and non-tribal entities.