Building Capacity in Context

Develop and apply knowledge to bridge competency gaps and lead multi-sector health improvements.

Effectively leading the health improvement strategy for an entire community requires a shift from organizational thinking to community focused thinking. The Community Chief Health Strategist leads a multi-sector approach to focus community resources on improving specific health outcomes. Part of a community multi-collaborative health approach, a Community Chief Health Strategist is an engaged change leader (or group of leaders) who builds community coalitions that investigate and take action to make meaningful progress on a community health issue. This can be a position shared by the leaders of multiple community health organizations. This consultative engagement helps those who aspire to this level of leadership to gain knowledge, practice and refine their capacity to lead these complex change initiatives. The engagement includes:

• Designating leaders in the anchor organization to champion the change effort
• Assessing the individual or organization’s readiness for such a role, including population health competencies and characteristics
• Understanding the culture of the anchor organization, community and neighborhood
• Understanding the 10 characteristics of a successful anchor organization
• An interactive overview on change leadership, problem selection, and use of QI tools to plan and implement a solution
• Facilitated launch of projects involving key stakeholders to address entrenched health challenges
• Coaching to achieve clear objectives with assessment of progress along the way
• Ongoing evolution as a leader to apply effective approaches to additional health challenges

This engagement incorporates innovation tools that provide a means for understanding complex situations and making appropriate response plans. These seven Breakthrough Thinking Tools and seven Advanced QI Tools enable sequenced responses at the system level involving many individuals who work on a solution at different levels of their organizations.

As a result of this engagement the organization can assume a role beyond its walls, as an anchor facilitating multi-sector initiatives that involve numerous community stakeholders.

Duration: Varies

This service is built upon the concepts introduced in PHF's 2016 white paper entitled, "Ten Positive Preparatory Steps to Enable a Population Health Coalition to Prosper."

Ready to get started?
PHF is ready to assist. Contact Ron Bialek at (202)218-4420 or rbialek@phf.org. You can also submit your information online.