Meet ENERGY, the Internal Magazine Helping the NYS Dept. of Health Build a Culture of Connection
Success StoriesIn spring 2024, Dr. Jillian Bumpus, Workforce Manager at the New York State Department of Health, went on a listening tour and talked to more than 100 employees across the state about the kind of workplace culture they’d like to experience. What she heard most wasn’t about pay or policies. Employees wanted to feel more connected to each other, to their leaders, and to colleagues in different regions.
With support from the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG), Dr. Bumpus and a public health fellow launched Energy, an internal publication built entirely around the personal stories of New York’s public health workforce. Not about the work they do, but the people behind the work. The response was immediate and overwhelming – issues have gone from only 10 pages to nearly 60. Stories about parenting, chronic pain, mental health needs, and everyday family life fill the pages of each new issue, and the submissions keep coming.
Dr. Bumpus believes this kind of connection isn’t separate from public health impact, it’s the foundation of it. New York’s 5,000-plus public health employees aren’t just serving their communities. They are their communities. Investing in them, as people, is investing in public health itself. Energy is a reminder that a stronger public health workforce starts from the inside out.
Video Transcript
The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
What was the situation in New York state prior to PHIG?
Last year, in the spring of 2024, I went on a listening tour and basically met with as many employees as I could, asked them questions about their workplace: what they enjoyed about their public health work, what they enjoyed about their area, and what they enjoyed about serving their community. I was fortunate to talk to a little over 100 people initially throughout the state, which was really exciting.
In that first listening tour, we learned a lot about what employees wanted to see as far as culture was concerned. They talked about their workspace needing improvements to make their work more efficient and more pleasurable. They talked a little bit about recognition – they love to be recognized, of course – and New York State already has some really great initiatives for recognition. But the one thing we did hear a lot about was: they wanted more connection. They wanted more space to connect with each other, with their leaders, with their supervisors, with people in different regions, and just have a more informal, social, collaborative environment.
How have you used PHIG funding to address this?
At the time, I was fortunate enough to get a public health fellow on board, and so she and I sat down, and we created “Energy.” This publication is so unique because we wanted to share personal stories of public health employees — our workforce — that were very personal to them. This was not about the public health work, but about the person behind the work.
What kind of stories have you featured?
I shared a story about being a mom and what that meant for me to show up to work every day. Sometimes it meant being frustrated with my son, who didn’t make his own lunch that day. I shared an experience about being in the break room and having this conversation with a colleague, who had just sent her child off to college for the first time. When she saw me frustrated, she said, “Cherish this time, because you’re going to be sending your kid off to college and you’ll miss that.” And I shared that story inside our first publication.
What’s the impact been?
That employee actually came up to me – she knew I was talking about her, and she said, “I never knew that that impacted you that way.” And I said, “Yeah, it really made me stop and think. I’m not going to have many of these mornings where I get to argue with my son about making lunch.” And she said, “Anytime you need advice about working through this, I’m here, because I feel like I need somebody too. I was a single mom, and now my only child is away at college, and I definitely struggle with missing them.”
The response we got after we shared that story, Sarah and I, was just tremendous. Just knowing that the first issue made such an impact on connection, we knew we had something really special. Over the next year, we published four issues — we’re on our fourth issue now — and we’ve gone from 10 pages in our first issue to about 60 pages for this year’s fall issue, which is tremendous.
Now, we have people emailing us saying, “I would love to share about this.” We have one on chronic pain. We have somebody who shared that they struggle with bipolar disorder. It’s a fun, quirky story about their cubicle space, which is always interesting when you walk by cubicle spaces that are very colorful. To hear the reason why is just so humbling, I think, as an employee. It’s a reminder that we should stop and get to know each other, and it’s a reminder that this is going to impact our public health work. That’s what I’m really excited about this publication doing.
Why is this work so important?
I think the message from our team was to remember that every public health employee is also a New Yorker — that the work we do at the Department of Health, 5,000-plus strong, is not only in support of our communities, but we are community members. Our workforce division director is passionate about this concept of “inside out,” in that everything we are putting out for our public health work, with all the tremendous resources that we have, we have to remember that the people behind the work also live in the communities that we serve. They are sending their children to school. They are shopping in the same grocery centers that we are inspecting and supporting. They’re sending their kids to camps in the communities that we are serving. They are not only our biggest advocates, but they are the ones we need to support the most from a workforce perspective. I am really hoping that Energy will remind leadership and remind our communities that: these are people first, and they are public health employees second.