142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

307980
Sharing Public Health Functions and Capabilities: Critical Issues

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Wednesday, November 19, 2014 : 1:10 PM - 1:30 PM

Gianfranco Pezzino, MD, MPH , Center for Sharing Public Health Services, Topeka, KS
Increasingly, local health officials and policymakers are turning to shared public health functions and capabilities across political boundaries as a means of increasing efficiencies and effectiveness.  The Center for Sharing Public Health services, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, supports and captures the learning from 16 teams across the country that are engaged in a range of activities related to exploring, developing, implementing, and/or improving cross-jurisdictional sharing (CJS).  A predictable sequence of events and a host of key considerations have emerged from these teams.  The goal of this session is to share the critical issues that local health officials can anticipate encountering when they engage in CJS work. 

The pursuit of CJS arrangements involves three distinct phases: exploring, planning and preparing, and implementing and improving.  The exploring phase is focused on understanding why CJS is being pursued, and sets the stage for planning and preparing how it will work.   In implementing and improving, the sharing begins, and the arrangement is evaluated and enhanced over time.  Sufficient time and attention to the exploratory phase is needed before any real progress toward a CJS arrangement can ensue. 

Financial issues are at the heart stakeholder concerns, and are most effectively tackled by addressing three distinct components in sequence:  the cost of the capacity or function that will be shared; how that cost will be modified when the capacity or function is shared; and  how the cost will be distributed among the participating jurisdictions.  This work entails both accounting and negotiation skills.

Finally, a host of other issues need to be addressed in some fashion when entering CJS arrangements.  These include issues related to legalities, governance, human resources, logistics, communications, and evaluation.   

This presentation will provide a high-level overview of these issues and be supplemented with a field-tested resource guide.

Learning Areas:

Administration, management, leadership
Public health administration or related administration
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Describe the ideal sequence of events when pursuing cross-jurisdictional sharing (CJS) arrangements. List the three key components related to financing CJS arrangements. Name five major issues to address when planning CJS arrangements.

Keyword(s): Leadership, Local Public Health Agencies

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As the Center Co-Director, I oversee all aspects of learning about and supporting 16 teams across the country that are working on cross-jurisdictional sharing arrangements for local public health departments. In addition, I design major resources developed by the Center to assist the teams in navigating the critical issues they face.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.