Fostering administrative preparedness: Strategies to address barriers in the management of health department funds

Administrative preparedness is the process of ensuring that fiscal and administrative authorities and practices that govern funding, procurement, contracting, hiring, and legal capabilities necessary to mitigate, respond, and recover from public health threats and emergencies can be accelerated, modified, streamlined, and accountably managed at all levels of government. A lack of administrative preparedness delays the acquisition of goods and services, hiring or assignment of personnel, disposition of funds, and legal determinations needed to implement public health protective measures both during an emergency and on a day-to-day basis. This session focuses on strategies for health departments to consider while assessing their current administrative preparedness capacity and planning for additional administrative preparedness capabilities. In this session participants will learn the definition of administrative preparedness as it relates to health department funding. The presenters will offer examples of common administrative preparedness challenges encountered by state and local health departments. Through discussion with the participants the presenters will share practices that have been put in place to overcome these challenges. This will illuminate possible approaches for affecting changes in the level of a health department's administrative preparedness. Based on this discussion participants will be able to evaluate feasible strategies for influencing health department administrative preparedness.