Strengthening public health infrastructure, workforce, and data systems in montana - A1 workforce the montana department of public health and human services (MT dphhs) respectfully submits an…

Strengthening public health infrastructure, workforce, and data systems in montana - A1 workforce the montana department of public health and human services (MT dphhs) respectfully submits an application for funding to address gaps and weaknesses made clear by the covid-19 pandemic. To increase the state's efforts to strengthen public health infrastructure and workforce, the MT dphhs public health system improvement office (phsio) will hire additional workforce development staff. The phsio will use funds to continue collaboration with the montana public health training center (mphtc), the state resource for public health trainings, employee wellness, and workforce development. MT dphhs's public health and safety division (phsd) will provide continued funding for existing staff positions at the local and tribal health departments to develop or reinforce their capacity and capability to provide the foundational public health services. As a result of the proposed activities, MT dphhs plans to have increased the hiring of diverse staff within the department and strengthened the public health infrastructure and workforce across the state. A2 foundational capabilities to continue to address and transform the public health system in montana, the phsd will build on the progress made and address identified opportunities for improvement. The funding will be used in two buckets, one for additional staffing and one for direct support to local and tribal health departments. Support to local and tribal health departments will be available in three phases: 1) direct technical assistance, 2) peer to peer mentoring to complete the phab pathways to accreditation, and 3) mini grants. In phase 1, the two additional staff positions will be at the phsd in the public health system improvement office to expand the staffing support to be able to provide direct technical assistance to local and tribal health departments that are unable to complete a CHA/chip/SP/QI/WFD/PMS because of staffing constraints. Phase 2 will engage eight health departments over the 5 years interested in completing phabs pathways to accreditation with help from the phsio staff and the montana public health institute. Phase 3 will provide mini grants to health departments via task orders with deliverables to complete or update as required by phab a CHA/chip/SP/QI/WFD/PMS. The phased approach will ensure all local and tribal health are engaged in completing these foundational plans and address the needs of the departments. In addition, phase 2 will create a library of policies, procedures, plans, and other key elements that can be shared with other health departments interested in pursuing pathways to accreditation. A3 data modernization over the past 18-months, and as a direct result of epidemiology and laboratory capacity for prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases (ELC) core funding and ELC data modernization supplemental funding, montana has assessed our current data infrastructure to identify legacy data systems, opportunities to replace manual processes, and the development of a montana public health data modernization workgroup. To further data modernization with the A3 data modernization funding opportunity, montana plans to take a multi-prong approach which includes developing detailed implementation plans of the data modernization workplan, completing work on identified data governance milestones, and enhancing GIS capacity and capabilities. As a result of the proposed activities, montana aims to build foundational capacity through a robust data governance policy and advance the data modernization initiatives identified in our data modernization workplan to promote efficiencies among local, state, and federal entities. We also expect to identify additional opportunities for interoperability while promoting efficiencies among local, state, and federal entities. Through workforce development we will seek to empower our public health professionals with MOD