System Transformation
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Frequently Asked Questions
Transforming the public health system in Minnesota
Send a question to the Joint Leadership Team online: Ask a Question: Transforming the Public Health System in Minnesota. As the Joint Leadership Team receives questions, it will post commonly-asked questions and answers here and share answers in its newsletter.
- What is the Joint Leadership Team?
- What are foundational public health responsibilities?
- What do foundational responsibilities look like in practice?
- Where can I learn more about funding for foundational responsibilities and the Foundational Public Health Responsibilities Grant?
What is the Joint Leadership Team?
The Joint Leadership Team envisions a seamless, responsive, publicly-supported public health system that works closely with the community to ensure healthy, safe, and vibrant communities. This system of state, local, and tribal health departments will help Minnesotans be healthy regardless of where they live.
This work of strengthening, updating, and transforming the public health system is not led by one single organization. Our inter-governmental relationships are key to making the public health system work. Three groups in Minnesota work together collaboratively, sharing leadership to guide the work of transforming the state’s public health system.
This Joint Leadership Team consists of people from SCHSAC (State Community Health Services Advisory Committee), LPHA (Local Public Health Association of Minnesota), and MDH (Minnesota Department of Health). All three groups are represented at every meeting; the team has met twice per month since 2022 and meetings are led by an independent facilitator.
Outside of meetings, workgroups made up of public health partners (sometimes along with contractors), assess, explore, plan, and execute, laying the tracks for what system transformation means in practice. In parallel, tribal nations we share geography with also consider how to strengthen their own public health infrastructure, as sovereign nations with their own authority, and we continue to communicate and learn from each other.
To learn more and view current Joint Leadership Team members, visit: Joint Leadership Team and Subgroups.
What are foundational public health responsibilities?
Where you live should not determine your level of public health protection. All Minnesotans should have access to comprehensive, high-quality public health, but our system is well-resourced in some programs, topics, and communities, and less so in others.
The foundational responsibilities (below) consist of the population-level activities unique to governmental public health. The responsibilities are divided into five topic areas and eight capabilities, all encircled by equity. These responsibilities should be in place everywhere for public health to work anywhere in Minnesota.
Framework of foundational public health responsibilities
How these responsibilities are carried out will look different depending on local context. Health departments will also provide additional services beyond the foundational responsibilities, as they always have, and may require more or less capacity in different areas and capabilities to best serve their communities.
The whole governmental public health system in Minnesota has a collective responsibility to Minnesotans’ health, and working together to meet foundational responsibilities can equip the statewide system for collective success.
To learn more and see what activities are included in Minnesota, visit: Foundational Public Health Responsibilities and Framework.
What do foundational responsibilities look like in practice?
Public health partners across Minnesota, at the state, local, tribal, and community level, are working together to answer: What would it look like for Minnesota to fulfill the foundational public health responsibilities?
As of April 2024, here are some of the ways we’re finding answers, together:
- Local public health leaders and staff have started to meet each month in a Foundational Public Health Responsibilities Community of Practice, to learn about, discuss, and resolve questions related to foundational areas, capabilities, and how they all fit together in real life.
- MDH and local public health agencies are using data from the 2022 system “cost and capacity assessment” to consider opportunities and challenges for doing foundational work locally and regionally, as discussed in this webinar and Q&A recorded earlier this month.
- To fulfill foundational responsibilities across the system, accountability and transparency are grounded in clear goals and measurement: The SCHSAC Performance Measurement Workgroup is considering how to measure the entire system’s performance by looking at data, monitoring progress, and reporting on trends that indicate opportunities for improvement. The brand new SCHSAC Foundational Public Health Responsibilities Workgroup will recruit members and begin meeting later this spring, to help the system determine the minimum standards for full implementation, locally and system-wide.
- Ongoing, annual funding for foundational public health responsibilities, a down payment on the health of Minnesotans, is supporting local and tribal public health agencies in work related to foundational areas and capabilities.
- Longstanding groups continue to address specific foundational responsibilities, like the Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board, the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Oversight Group, and the Infectious Disease Continuous Improvement Board (IDCIB)—for example, the IDCIB is aligning Minnesota’s Disease Prevention and Control Common Activities Framework with foundational responsibilities, to ensure Minnesota’s public health professionals consistently and cohesively look for, detect, and prevent infectious diseases.
- Work to strengthen tribal public health moves in parallel to state and local activities: As sovereign nations with their own public health authority, many of the tribal nations Minnesota shares geography with are also assessing their public health infrastructure against national standards, and considering what it looks like to strengthen their work and build capacity to meet their needs.
- The Minnesota Infrastructure Fund is supporting a second round of locally-led, two-year innovation projects, testing new ways of doing foundational public health work that could be used across the state—locally, regionally, or statewide.
- Staff from the MDH Center for Public Health Practice continue to provide convening, connecting, coaching, and technical assistance on foundational responsibilities.
Where can I learn more about funding for foundational responsibilities and the Foundational Public Health Responsibilities Grant?
For more logistics- and operations-oriented questions about foundational public health responsibility funding, grant requirements, invoicing, and more, please visit Funding for Foundational Public Health Responsibilities and scroll to "frequently asked questions."