Following up on Steve’s post, I visited the discussion forum for the web cast on Public Health Survival: Leadership in a Falling Market (which is now posted). One of the respondents wrote in to tell about his predicament – to save money, the City Council had dismantled his public health department, transferring some functions to other departments, cancelling others, and leaving this respondent as a “department of one.”
I was shocked by the drastic nature of this city council’s actions, and it struck me that a lot of drastic stuff might be going on out there that we in academia are not fully aware of. It would help us to know what is going on for you… that way we can think about things we could do or offer that would better serve you through these trying times. In any event, as a community of practice, it would be good for us all to know what’s going on and how different individuals, organizations, and communities are dealing with it. For example, the man who is the only member of his department is working on changing his role from one of “directing and controlling to one of advising and consulting,” he said on the discussion forum. Ideally, he is drawing upon connections he’s made in the past to work with others who are now doing the work he and his colleagues used to do. He asked, at the end of his post, whether there were any role models for such a drastic transformation. All I could think of was the importance of making sure you have a community of people and organizations who understand what public health is and why it is important to them that the public stay healthy and safe: that way you'll never truly be a "department of one." But I'd rather hear from you...
If you get a chance, please write in with your stories about “providing leadership in a falling market” – whether yours personally, or those you have heard from others, and what you are doing right now to cope with the challenges of these times. And we realize there are still the day-to-day challenges – what is getting cut in your health department? Are you seeing a change in your clientele as a result of the economic downturn? Also, if you’ve undertaken public health business planning in the past, are you having any positive results of work you’ve done building partnerships, using business practices, and the like?
- Anne
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3 comments:
It looks as if the State Health Director's Conference in January is going to be addressing issues like this. I'd be excited to go.
I know we have had an increase in our WIC participants which may say something about food availability. Shirin Scotten
Shirin,
If you do go, please blog about it! Any anyone else who goes, please chime in about what are the real challenges facing us right now.
I think providing leadership in this failing market and surviving in this failing markets rests on being more creative in how we handle our current problems. Are you developing new and unusual partnerships in order to address issues? Although I am not a fan of the term “Thinking out of the box”, I think this is the perfect phrase – are we searching for other possibilities that may be more ingenious than we have been in the past?
The title of North Carolina State Health Director’s Conference that was held last week was ROI in Tight Economic Times. The CareShare Health Alliance was on the agenda. The Executive Director, a local health department director, the President/CEO of the NC Institute of Medicine and the Associate Director of The Duke Endowment spoke about the program. They mentioned these tough economic times and how “despite the broad array of safety net organizations, most communities lack sufficient capacity to meet the primary and preventive needs of all of the uninsured.” In North Carolina, there are 1.5 million individuals who do not have health insurance. The Care Share Health Alliance aims to provide technical assistance and grants to help communities provide a coordinated system of healthcare for North Carolinians. They will begin to offer technical assistance in March 2009 and a request for proposals will be sent out in June 2009. All local health departments and other entities that provide healthcare services should stay focused on this organization and use them as a resource.
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