This transcript is auto-generated and may contain inaccuracies.

Brian Lentes:
Good morning. Thank you for joining us here today—very excited to have a great panel. This is our session entitled organizational competencies, workforce practices, and collaborative approaches. I’m Brian Lentes. I’m Senior Director at ASTHO. I focus on public health infrastructure, and I’ll serve as your moderator today.

So again, thanks for joining us. We have an exciting session today. What we’ll do is go through some presentations, and then we’ll also make sure you’re all engaged through some Q&A towards the end. So just a few opening remarks before I do introductions, and we’ll kick off the presentations.

So, focusing on this topic today, we know that as we look at the future of public health, we understand the systems are only as strong as the people who are hired and the partnerships that support the workforce. Today’s session focuses on foundational competencies that drive high performing public health departments from the way we build and sustain the workforce and how we collaborate across the sectors and the communities, and understanding the importance of how to do that, we understand that modern public health challenges require more than isolated expertise. So, bringing in subject-matter expertise is not always enough. They demand cross-agency coordination and a workforce equipped, competent, and focused on public health systems thinking, so even maybe beyond the health department, but the entire system investing in our workforce isn’t just about hiring more people, it’s about shaping organizational culture and aligning skills with community needs, which we will see today here in our presentations.

Throughout the session, you’ll hear from leaders who are breaking down silos and rethinking our workforce strategies through the use of the PHIG grant and embedding core competencies into their health departments. The goal today is for us to walk away with some practical approaches to strengthen the departments and the systems, and overall departments that we lead. Thank you for being here and for your dedication to building a strong public health system through organizational approaches and workforce competencies.

Today, we are joined by our great speakers. I’ll introduce, and then we’ll begin our presentations. But we have Keshana Cody from the New York State Health Department, Dr. Eric Shercliff from the New York State Health Department, and Danyae Bellamy from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. So with that, I’ll let Keshana begin our presentations.

Keshana Cody:
Good morning, everyone. So we’re going to be very conversational. There will be some interactive activities throughout both of our presentations, but we’re hoping to be able to connect and talk to you all.

My name is Keshana Owens Cody, and I’m the Division Director for Public Health Infrastructure for the New York State Department of Health, Office of Public Health, and I’m the Workforce Director for the grant.

Eric Shircliff:
Hi everybody. Good morning. I’m Eric Shercliff. I’m the PHIG evaluator, and, you know, I’m part of the dynamic duo in front of you here. So I’ll let you, Keshana, take the first few slides.

Keshana Cody:
So Eric and I started about a month apart from each other, so we’ve been the reason why I say dynamic duo is that we’ve worked together tremendously to get the grant off the ground. So we’re going to do kind of like a tip for tap on what it looked like from the workforce director’s perspective to get the grant off the ground, and then he’s going to present on what it looked like from his perspective to get the program evaluation off the ground. So I kind of covered the overview already, but we’re going to talk about the different relationships that it took and some of the strategies that we utilize to engage different departments and different areas of the Department of Health to get us off the ground.

So, in reflection, I wanted everyone to take a self, take themselves back to the first day that you may have taken on the role of either a program evaluator, workforce director, or principal investigator. Remember, you’re getting the notice of award, looking at your budget narrative, really thinking through, how am I going to execute everything that’s in here? In the room, how many of you are the workforce director? Any program evaluators? And then PIs? Who did I miss? What other roles do we have in the room that I may have missed?

Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, our national partners. Anyone else? All right. So, what we wanted to have when we’re in this session, just think back to, like, your first time getting this, all of this great information. I have to do something with all of this. I have to come up with a strategy. I have to connect with different people. That’s kind of where we’re going to be, where we’re going to take ourselves today. So our strategy to implement when we got the budget narrative, and what’s interesting about both of us is we came from a Covid health disparities grant, two different ones, actually, so we at least had that backdrop for us to get this grant off the ground, but we knew we had to kind of go back to some of those same strategies for getting that grant off the ground as well.

So we conducted a lot of listening sessions. We definitely rooted ourselves in PHAB’s foundational capabilities. And being that a two is all about that, we really rooted ourselves in that. How are we going to talk about this? How are we going to talk to some of our infrastructure about PHAB foundational capabilities? Because that might be unknown areas, and we’re going to unpack that a little bit, too. We really got into the accreditation as well, because New York is accredited. And then we started talking about project management consultation and making sure that project management was central in our work.

We had over 100 positions to hire within the public health infrastructure grant across not only the Office of Public Health (OPH), but the Department of Health as a whole. I think we’re over. We’re over. We’re complete with that exercise. But one of the things that we wanted to make sure with bringing on the team that is really managing, I would say, the core public health infrastructure grant. So we brought on a new public health continuing education unit that is separate from our HR team. We brought on a health, wealth, and well-being unit that is going to be focused on looking at health outcomes from economic prosperity and economic stability.

We also brought on a community engagement unit that is separate from our public affairs group and community engagement units. We brought on a team that’s our liaison teams that are working with academic institutions, regional offices, and local health departments, also a little bit separate from there. There might be these roles in other areas, but we brought them central to OPH leadership and then the program leadership and management team, which is ourselves and a couple of our other staff. But we wanted to make sure that when this group came on, because again, it was just Eric and me, as well as our grants administrator, we wanted to make sure that they’re rooted in change management, because we knew we were going to be doing transformational work.

I think all of us can say in this room, we’re doing incredible work, lots of transformation taking place, but we wanted to make sure that this team was rooted in change management, so every staff member that’s on the core team has received not only introduction to change management, but also continuous like we take change management training feels like almost, it’s not every year, it’s like every six months we get a reboot to really focus on where we are, so that we can just continue to move the needle. Because we know we’re hit with many different obstacles and challenges, but we wanted to make sure that that’s central for the core team that is administering the grant.

So, the formula for conducting our listening sessions was to identify our key partners throughout the Department of Health. We had formal emails introducing ourselves, and the grant robust presentations that I feel like they just kept increasing new knowledge we have like a whole sharepoint full of presentations just to understand what the PHIG Grant was, we hosted a variety of different town halls, and then we conducted follow ups with everyone. Another thing that was also foundational that I want to center us on, as well is the Surgeon General released a call out on workplace wellness, and we’ve embedded this in our team, in all the work that we’re doing. So when we meet with different teams, when we are even doing our own staff meetings.

We do checks on all of this. Are we making sure that our spaces, when we have meetings, when we’re doing different trainings, we’re protecting from harm, we’re connecting and establishing a community of belonging and social support That we have work life harmony, mattering at work, making sure that there’s meaning to the work that we’re doing, and people feel connected and are able to contribute, and that there’s opportunities for growth. What’s also essential to this is that our Commissioner also bought into this. I’ll be honest and say he’s the reason why a lot of us are talking about this, because when he found when the surgeon general released this, he also talked about it in some of our town hall meetings that went to the Department of Health as a whole. So we’ve been able to now move it a little bit into implementation across the grant as well.

So what did we learn? So anybody who likes mind mapping does a lot of different maps. These are the relationships, and this has grown. I feel that we’ve in our presentations that we’ve had in the past, it was much smaller, but these are all of our relationships. I would say, across the department of health, we knew we had to engage and talk to some of them are external partners as well. So obviously, our local health departments, because we had to release 40% of our funding out to the local health departments. Working with other jurisdictions, our HR team’s office, we have the Office of Health Equity and Human Rights, so we had to work with them.

We have a variety of different subcontractors that are providing training and development. We worked collaboratively with the CDC, ASTHO, and our national partners. Another key relationship that we also cultivated was our New York State Association for County Health Officials, or NYSACHO, in our region, to work extensively with their local health departments and help us to collaborate and engage in the space that they already have with all of their health department commissioners or health department directors. So this is our information technology, data-driven. I would say, like this is what our world looks like, I mean, it still looks like this. Probably more relationships that we’ll talk about towards the end, but this is where we started with identifying our key partners.

So now we’ll get into it. So we’re going to do the tip for tap for each relationship. So, human resources. In order for us to hire all the positions that I mentioned, they were key. I had to work with them extensively on one-on-one talks to them about the roles that we needed to hire, how we’re going to get these positions posted quickly, what’s in the job descriptions, and where we’re posting all the positions. So that was key, also helping them understand why there is such a push for us to hire all of these different roles. We also talked to them a lot about public health foundational capabilities, and helping them understand what public health foundational capabilities are, and how that contributes to our ability to hire, and hire timely.

And then we also did a lot of they so one of them had to help us write job descriptions, but we also had to balance that, as you might have seen in when I was sharing the different units, there was a field that some of the roles could be duplicative of what exists in their current departments, and helping them to expand that. It’s not just compliance-related trainings, but we’re also looking for them to push into specific core competencies of public health, specific to different positions. I will call out too, before I pass to Eric, that we have two different HR (Human Resources) departments that we’re working with. We have a bona fide agent of the Department of Health. So our work, actually, this is kind of flavored throughout our presentation, is that we’re working between the State Department of Health, as well as another organization that also hires. So we’ve had to establish a lot of different crosswalks to help us understand and break down the processes, relationships, and other things. So I’ll pass to Eric.

Eric Shircliff:
So you know, evaluators in the room know that we can’t do much, we can’t report very much without engaging human resources. This is kind of critical to our performance measure reporting. But a lot of grant reporting is like, typically one-directional, and maybe ours still is too, right? But it’s, here’s the grant, here’s what it’s about, here’s the required deliverables. You go to human resources or the responsible party, and say that this is what we need, this is when we need it, and that can be the end of the conversation. But we really wanted to open it up, to have a conversation, because we really feel like our goals are one and the same.

I mean, we all know that the long-term goals of the grant are a sustained, strengthened workforce to meet public health needs, and if human resources isn’t interested in that, then, you know, I’m probably off base. So we need to communicate the long-term goals, why we’re interested in this. And really, even for us, the performance measure was really just a starting point, right? So we have to report on hiring timeliness, but we know that the entire picture of hiring a person from the beginning to the end of the cycle is 100. I mean, there’s a lot of steps involved, right? We’re not just thinking about those last two time points that we sent over to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).

So that was the point of the conversation with human resources. Is like, this is what we have to report. But really, we want to understand more of the cycle. So what data is there? What can you give us? What do you track? What don’t you track? What’s available? And how can we develop some automated ways to share that? So it’s not, you know, this kind of unexpected burden every six months. So in multiple conversations. I mean, maybe this, this took probably a year or a year and a half. We’re just kind of having these meetings, developing reports, and revising the code based on needs, and we’re able to generate a weekly report. It’s kind of a hiring status update. It’s just kind of, they wrote the code.

It just comes out every Friday, and we compare it with our other tracking systems that I think I’ll talk about in just a second. And then there’s a biannual report that captures the kind of larger timeliness measures. But it was really an iterative kind of conversation and collaboration, because every year, I think we have a complete set of kind of indicators now, right? But every year we’re kind of working out what’s there and what’s missing, making sure we understand the data they’re giving us. And so, you know, so we can learn more about the hiring process and the cycle involved from kind of the beginning to the end. So, as Keshana says, it’s kind of it, it’s an ongoing process, right? We never really got to a point, even though I said it was complete. It’s kind of an open conversation, right? And so the data is always evolving.

Keshana Cody:
Next relationship grants administration. So our grants administration is probably not much more unique than the grants administration teams that you might be working with. One of the big things with our grants administration team is that they were used to managing all aspects of the grant in terms of other grants that they have. So responsibilities include capturing all the work plans, looking at the budgets, and pretty much taking everything. And we were a little bit more hands-on, and we wanted to be able to educate and provide training and technical assistance. So we had to figure out our roles and responsibilities.

With rolling out this, you know, I feel like it’s an enormous grant. So we had to figure out what our roles and responsibilities are, and also, again, make crosswalks of like, who’s responsible for each activity, create new policies and procedures. And one of the biggest things, I would say, is that we started to really integrate them into our team. They’re not in, I know, even though their office is in a different place; they’re in all of our staff meetings. They attend our staff meetings, and they are part of our presentations. So they’re really immersed in the grant. And I can say that actually I’m probably stealing from the slide later, but they can, they would say that’s helped us with when we’re getting different budgets, now, they have a sound understanding of what we’re trying to execute, so we’ve definitely pulled them in to be a part of our team.

Eric Shircliff:
Yeah, absolutely. That kind of integration of grants administration has been kind of eye-opening for me, because it’s an element of our infrastructure that I really wasn’t aware was there, and I’ve worked with other colleagues that never worked so closely with them as we do, right? And kind of bring them into those programmatic meetings, I think, was really very helpful. Their grant, their tracker for our hiring metrics, is really my source of truth for evaluation.

I mean, I eventually get the report from human resources, but I really just use that to confirm what we’ve been tracking, kind of from the beginning of the cycle because grants admin knows exactly the number of positions that are have been budgeted for, have been requested, have been approved, all the stages of approval, where it’s at, if it’s a backfill, if it’s not, if it’s been reposted like they have all of the details, right? And that’s all the stuff that I’m really looking for to better understand and evaluate that hiring process, to look for, you know, ways to improve efficiencies. So we’re always in conversation with them, kind of weekly, biweekly, about what’s going on with those positions, so I can understand kind of the timeline. Yeah, so I think that’s enough about grants admin. Let’s move on to not to cut them short or anything. We love them, but for our local health departments.

Keshana Cody:
So to roll out the local health department engagement, we had to balance two things. One, internally, what our processes look like. How are we rolling out the information to them? How are we going to get this budget received back and get the funding amount that they need? We had some internal work that we had to do, too, at the same time, as well as working on external activities, so providing technical assistance, helping the LHDs (local health departments) understand how to submit different things to us, but then also recognizing their needs.

We held a lot of different listening sessions directly with the local health departments so that we can, because when we came on, it was a little challenging to get out the 40% initially, but we’ve definitely surpassed a lot of different things there. And then this is where we also incorporated NYSACHO, so that we can understand from NYSACHO, you know, what the different things local health departments are coming to you related to this grant. How can we make it more efficient? And also, how can we make sure that, you know, we’re breaking down, just like we’re all going to the CDC to ask questions on how to move this grant forward.

We also had to share that with the local health departments and help them understand the different rules and parameters. So it took a lot of like, we did a lot of external listening sessions so that we can then work on our internal processes as well, and again, balancing working between two different employers or organizations, our grants administration teams are the same. We have two different grants administration teams, but this one is being run by one side of our organization, but we did a lot of communication, helping them understand the unique needs of local health departments and the challenges that they face, so that we can break down some of our processes as well with LHDs.

Eric Shircliff:
So much to say about our local health departments. Of course, that was kind of an early piece of the puzzle to figure out as an evaluator, right? What do we do with them? I mean, I’m at least, I’m at least kind of located around the folks in our central office. And you know, I’m not far away from them, but our LHJs are way out there. We have 57 of them in New York or in the rest of the state, as we call it. So that’s everything but New York City. I still feel like that’s a lot, but I’ve seen presentations from Illinois, like 107 local health departments. They got a lot of counties. I think Connecticut even has, like, more localities. Anyway, it’s a heavy task to think about how to get the reporting from them, because as they hire, we need to track that and report that up to the CDC as well. So in the middle of kind of trying to workshop that, and think about, you know, tracking tools and systems that we could use to kind of reduce the reporting burden on them, because that was a charge of the grant is to try to make it as easy as possible on the local health departments.

Keshana, in some conversation with somebody somewhere, was kind of made aware of NYSACHO, which is the New York State Association of County Health Officials, right organizations that exist, I think, in most states, if not all right? And I’d been in the state government for maybe five years, not a terribly long time, but I did not know about them. Had worked on grants that touched county-level leadership and exec. Didn’t even know about this association, right? And so for us, that was kind of like a watershed moment. So this was like, you know, immediately, this is kind of a way in, right? Because they have relationships. They have trust with the counties.

They have those personal relationships, and it’s often hard, as Keshana said, to start that when you’re just a new grant team, and you’re just emailing or calling folks who kind of never heard of you or your grant, right? So this helped us build that trust. They had also just implemented an enumeration survey, which is a workforce enumeration survey of all of the representative counties. I think the year before PHIG started. So they were going into their second year, so, partnering with them and bringing them into the grant, we were able to add a couple of questions to that survey.

So we were really interested in hiring barriers, obstacles to retention, hiring, hiring timeliness, you know, all those kinds of typical things. So this way, we just added a couple of questions at the end of their enumeration survey. They have a very high response rate. And you know, it was easy for them, was easy for us. We didn’t have to think about how to collect that data. And so it’s just really been a great partnership. And every year they have that survey. And so, you know, every year we have some new questions for them to add.

Keshana Cody:
And regional office engagement, last but not least. We have five regional offices across New York State, and each is different. They do not have the same staffing patterns. They do not have some of the different services that they’re offering. So it took some time to also understand each of the regional offices and their needs. They had a variety of different positions that were coming from the grant to be placed there. We had to understand that we had to pull out organizational charts. I have an HR background in public health, so I was like, can I see your org charts? I need to see how this is all laid out.

And we found that there were some supervisor infrastructures that, if I put a different one, you know, some of the roles that we were trying to put in through the grant, it may not have the supervisory infrastructure in place. So then we had to, like, rebalance and say, okay, we actually need to get this position too, and add this in. So each one was unique. We did, we listened to their recruitment challenges. Because across the state, we have a variety of different schools, a variety of different pipelines, but each area is different, like we struggled with how many of you struggled with data modernization, getting that role, potentially off the ground, and some other data analytics roles. In some areas of the state, it is very easy to hire. In some areas, it was challenging.

So we got to listen to those different needs and try to help them with building up their pipelines. And then we co-located staff. We worked on a co-location model between our central office and the regional offices as well. Okay, all right, so again, going back to centered on wellness, all of those relationships, every conversation we had, we were really centered on this model again. Each time we gave everybody you know a chance to speak, provided ample time for them to be able to share with us, connect on you know, what are their unique needs and challenges that they have at their regional offices, as well as local health departments and other departments throughout DOH (Department of Health).

So we’re going to rush through this piece, because I know we’re getting close on time, but getting to yes. In one of our meetings with one of these strategic partners we just went through, we started to, you know, have different debates, and I’ll be real and transparent. Every meeting has not been easy to talk about this grant. We’re making sure we’re not stepping on each other’s toes. We’re making sure we’re breaking down silos. Like I’m big on silo breaking. And some people call me a silhouette breaker. So I was like, we gotta, we gotta work through this. And I’m a team player. How can I help you?

So one day in one of the meetings, one of the strategic partners said, okay, we have to get to a place where these meetings are, we’re getting to yes. So every meeting, we try to get to yes, no matter what we’re talking about, no matter what we’re working on, because we know if we don’t get to yes, it’s it’s going to slow down the transformation, it’s going to slow down the grant, and it’s going to slow down all the great things that we can do through the grant. So we’re going to highlight how we got to different areas of some of the relationships that we just talked about, and what it looked like to get to yes.

So, for grants administration, we have jointly worked together to advocate for increased responsiveness to local health departments. And we have all of our local health departments in contract, and like their budget modifications, have been submitted, all but maybe two. But it’s because they’re still working through some of the challenges of the grant, not necessarily with the department, but more or less through their own infrastructures at that, their local base. We’ve developed a lot of different policies and procedures that we’re going to, again at some point, turn into a cross-cutting grant, because this is one of those grants that’s cross-cutting.

So we wanted to make sure that we’re able to share our best practices. So that’s somewhere where we’re going with this as well. And then we recently held. We mimicked the CDC town halls that they’ve been giving to us for years. We just did the same thing as we rolled out the A2 notice of continuation. So our grants administrator, as well as Eric and I, presented the information on what we needed for A2 continuation. Had a high volume of attendance. We did a rollout of like three days, but that was just bringing us all together to really help everyone understand A2 year four.

Yeah, I was gonna say right. Recruitment infrastructure. So, working collaboratively with our human resource team, we reviewed and provided recommendations to improve current data entry systems. Looking at our job descriptions, where they’re posted, and interview questions. We’ve been able to support our HR teams, both of them in this respect, as well as onboarding, like there are a couple of us working right now on a project related to how we help people understand where they really work, the Department of Health, as well as the other organization that also hires for the department. We’ve increased job aids. So there are a lot of job aids created for new managers, because we recognize there’s been a lot of turnover in public health.

There’s been a lot of turnover in our department. So there’s a lot of institutional knowledge that’s been lost. So we want to make sure everybody understands the whole hiring and recruitment process, and then just increasing the awareness of positions overall. Like I have a team right now that’s getting ready to head to the state fair. I don’t know if anybody’s gone to state fair in their grant, but our team is actually like getting themselves together to head down to the state fair and increase awareness of just different positions that are available at the department. And then an untapped resource that I feel sometimes gets missed is like we’ve been working very intentionally with our administrative teams too, so our admin really providing them with training. They have their own.

We’ve brought on a lot of different admins from different parts of the Office of Public Health who are working together on really mapping out how these processes really work, because they’re the ones doing a lot of these different travel and travel purchasing. Well, actually, that’s what I’m highlighting up here. But we’ve been able to get them all together, provide them with different training, and also help them expand their career pathways. So we’ve really honed in our administrative workforce as well. And then in the regional offices, as I mentioned, we really worked on looking at their job titles, looking at where they’re recruiting, really strategizing on increasing diversity and across the entire state, streamlining communications, as well as breaking down the grants for our regional offices as well, and then increasing awareness of the programs and services that ensure essentials of public health are delivered regionally.

For our local health departments, we institute a lot of different things. We hold a monthly meeting. We have a newsletter that goes out to local health departments quarterly, where we share updates on the grant, like, for instance, they all know I’m here, and they can’t wait for me to come back so that I can share what we learned. So we’re very intentional and engaged with them as well. When we’re starting to talk about sustainability, like, how do we sustain all these different roles?

And I know these are all conversations we’re having within our teams as well, but we’re very intentionally engaged with them and providing a lot of different technical assistance options. We have a local health department liaison who’s dedicated to working with them, and she hosts office hours for them as well, so that they understand. And if they have questions related to their budget submissions and things like that. So there’s a dedicated resource, and that came from them. They actually said to us, we need a dedicated person to be able to answer and respond to our questions. So we’ve answered that call.

Eric Shircliff:
Okay, so for academic engagement, one of our early goals, which is actually written into our TEP (Technical Evaluation Plan), was to increase the awareness of public health careers. So our mantra is, kind of, make public health public. It’s actually going to copyright it eventually. But we’ve really taken that, that as our charge, to make public health public. So another liaison role, which is a completely new position that was written and filled with her academic liaison. And since day one, like, she’s been busy kind of working with everybody. She’s partnering with both HRs, with our fellowship program, civil service, local health departments, regional and, you know, as many academic institutions as she can get out to hosting kind of regular webinars, really trying to just increase those pathways to public health and to reach like, what we would call, like, non traditional major so not folks who are already in the School of Public Health or thinking about public health.

All my degrees are in sociology. I don’t know how many years in classrooms never heard about public health once. I know it was a thing, you know, but I never knew about it, and somehow I landed here. But we really want to, you know, broaden that reach. And she’s done just that, right? She and her team have increased the presence at career fairs, etc. They’ve redesigned our public health works website, and now they’re moving into K-12, right? Because it’s never too early to start thinking about a career. So you got to get those kindergarteners ready. But so much to talk about with some of our new units here, but we’ll continue to the next one.

This is our Pathways to Public Health program, which is our internship program. It’s a cohort-based program, so it’s summer, fall, and spring. It’s really open to anybody. We’ve got co we’ve got interns from all kinds, you know, universities, colleges across New York state. Again, we’re also trying to broaden the reach. So we’ve had some business students. We’ve had data science majors, etc, trying to get people exposed to the world of public health and the careers and jobs available to them. I mean, the program is just, like, really exploding. There’s a lot of buy-in. There’s a lot of interest. Over 100 applications received per posting for our summer internships. So they do a lot of fantastic stuff.

One of the novel approaches to our program is that there’s, there’s like, structured support for the interns, right? Because it’s a cohort system. They all come in the same day, and they leave the same day. So there are a lot of activities, there is a lot of engagement to get them together so they can kind of learn together as a group. But there’s also support for the supervisors. A lot of times, the folks who put in for an intern are new supervisors. Have never supervised staff before. It actually can be kind of a barrier to career mobility, right? At least we found that in the state, there is a lack of supervisory experience. So some folks might want that.

They might really be unsure about whether or not they want to be a supervisor, but if they put in for an intern, you know, they get to have that experience, and there’s that same structured support for them as well. They meet biweekly, talk about all of the barriers and successes, and just kind of like all the things you have to do as a supervisor, what to do, how to do it, and how to do it better. And it’s been, you know, a positive experience for everybody involved. I was actually one of the early participants, but I think I’ll talk about that, the impact of that intern, a little bit later.

The next unit to talk about is public health, continuing education. This was originally written as training and development, which is perhaps more intuitive, but as Keshana said, like, as we kind of these jobs and units were written, really had to delineate, you know, the lanes, right? So what exactly is this unit doing, and how is it different from the training and development that happens in the human resources space? So because we definitely don’t want to, you know, infringe on that work, it’s a dedicated space. It’s important for our workforce. But as got rebranded to public health, continuing education, which I think makes sense, and I think Keshana alluded to this. It’s, you know, it’s about training in public health for public health professionals. And so it has that expanded reach.

It’s another group who’ve been collaborating with everybody in the agency. Of course, human resources, all of our centers. We have eight centers in the Office of Public Health. One of the major partners was the Center for Environmental Health that has a lot of specific training needs. Also, our fellowship program, the Public Health Core. Let me try to think, what are some of the outcomes? I’ve also been working with our strategic plan training subgroups. We’ve done a lot of work to identify training gaps and resources, kind of across the board in the agency. So we’ve got a lot of really fantastic trainings that have come out recently.

My favorite was the public health live with in partnership with ASTHO on trauma-informed leadership. That was a fantastic event. And they got a training catalog and calendar coming out, just a ton of stuff. Really amazing. Lastly, I think, anyway, is our organizational wellness unit. So not surprisingly, they were like the first to adopt the Surgeon General’s five essentials to the worksite wellness framework, which we’ve shown you once or twice already. Have we seen a couple times? You might see it again. It’s really foundational for all of our work. I’m definitely going to talk about it again later to sum up.

So they use that as a framework, and they were also one of the early teams to make use of our PHWINS (Public Health Workforce Interest and Needs Survey) data from 2021, right? And so they use that data to identify some gaps or, you know, places to move into to improve our organizational wellness. They combine that data with a listening tour. So they did a listening tour, I think, a couple rounds of tours across all of OPH, including our regional offices, to really listen to and connect to staff and hear their stories. And out of those, they’ve produced a couple of digital toolkits. There are recognized toolkits because folks really wanted to find ways to recognize their staff, new, interesting ways to collaborate.

So this is a toolkit that actually was a collaborative process, like these aren’t tools that are just kind of pulled off of a resource site. These are actual methods that supervisors and teams use to recognize their staff; just put them into one resource kit. There’s also a wellness for the win supervisor digital Toolkit, which is all about putting tools together for supervisors, new and old, so that they can implement strategies to promote health and well-being. Our energy magazine, which we wanted to bring copies for everybody, just didn’t make it to the conference, but it’s a fantastic new publication that runs stories on individual staff. Every issue has a theme. It’s been a really well-received publication, and I’ll pass it back to Keshana talk about our strategic planning efforts.

Keshana Cody:
So OPH, or the Office of Public Health, was also under the grant, and we were getting ready to unveil our strategic planning strategy. So the team, the core team, is part of all of these different work groups. There’s a collaboration and communications team. So one of our units, actually, the lead is part of the public health infrastructure grant. There’s a data systems and usage group, a strength and diversity of the OPH workforce. I’m the lead for that work group. There’s a health equity work group that our lead is from the health and well-being unit. We have a public health science capacity work group as well as an emergency response. So public health infrastructure has been able to pour into the strategic planning activities and leverage our funding sources to support a lot of the different initiatives that are coming out of the strategic plan.

So I know we’re getting close to time, one minute. Okay, so what’s next for New York? If you go to the PHIG partner site, you might see that if you drop down to New York, you’ll see all of our different success stories, A1 and A2. We are, I know a lot of us are probably submitting, or have submitted, two related activities, but we’re moving. Now that we have our staffing underway, we’re going to start to move into building the community, community infrastructure in our partnerships and externally, leveraging our lessons learned and going into a different space. So we’re going to invite new partners. So we’re working with the public affairs group, which is the next layer, adding to our existing teams as well.

Eric Shircliff:
There it is. Okay, fantastic. Okay, in 30 seconds, how do we keep the momentum up from years one and two? Well, basically, by doing the same things that got us to this point, which is continuing collaboration within our agency, outside of our agencies, across historical silos. We talk a lot about breaking silos. I want to, like, recognize that and that it’s important, but in talking to our staff, I have realized that silos are important because they help us do our unique work. Right? Chronic disease surveillance is way different from lab reporting. You know, there are just different needs.

So silos are important, but we do need to kind of break them in order to at least build a bridge across them and have those connections and conversations. So we got to keep those going. We want those to continue beyond the grant. We want to sustain our focus on on data and data driven change performance measure reporting and PHWINS data have really been like foundational, I mean, I can’t really think of something that’s come out of the grant that didn’t start, or what we couldn’t really, you know, connect a dot back to that performance measure or to something that was already in the PHWINS data from 2021. So I want to keep that going as well.

And then, of course, continuing to support workplace wellness initiatives. As I said, we’ve talked about organizational wellness a couple of times. You’ve seen the slide. It’s printed out and posted up on people’s walls around the office. You know, again, it’s really, it’s really foundational to us. I think it’s a reminder that, as we do public health, and we in New York talk about, you know, promoting the health and optimal physical and mental health of all New Yorkers, that we’re New Yorkers too. So it’s about us and that we have to kind of practice what we preach, and we have to put into practice those wellness behaviors that we want our communities to engage in as well, right? So, yeah, I think that’s how we’re going to try to keep it up. We’ll hold questions for later, later after we hear from North Carolina. Thank you.

Danyae Bellamy:
Hi guys. I’m Danyae, and I am from North Carolin. So I know I’m the only thing standing between you and lunch, so I’m gonna try to get through this fast. So like I said, my name is Danyae. I am the PHIG evaluator for North Carolina at the Division of Public Health. My Workforce Director is not here. She recently gave birth. So I am going to try to advocate and communicate what she does and how we got to where we are in her place. And so today I’m going to go over the financial, the foundational capability of organizational administrative competency, and I’m going to refer to it as org comp from here on out, so I don’t trip over. And I’m going to tell you guys how we defined it, or using the definition of it and the activities and programs we’ve developed in order to move change and move the needle on where we are as a state, based on our foundational capability assessments and how I evaluate it, and where we go from there.

So just like everybody in this room, we receive funding from PHIG in areas of workforce, foundational capabilities, and data modernization, A1, A2, A3, as I’m sure you guys all know. And so once we received the funding in 2023, there were assessments done and foundational capabilities. And of course, we had PHWINS data from 2021, and we used that baseline information to set plans in place. But keep in mind, me and Marina did not come on a team until 2024 so there was a year of plans being made, trying to get people hired, working in PHIG but once Marina and I got in, she developed a method, methodology, sorry, on how we were going to move from here on out, from 2023 2024 and where we are today. And her plan was, we’re going to assess, use the data, make a plan, implement it, monitor it, and it’s a continuous cycle. But I do want to circle back. Can anybody tell me what an org comp is, like what the definition is? How does PHAB define it? Anybody? Are we having a conversation?

If not, I’ll define it. I’m going to read off the definition. Thank you.

Audience Member #1:
[Not audible.]

Danyae Bellamy:
Beautifully said. Thank you, Ryan, so yeah, as he said, it’s just the basic skills and systems in place that our agency has, or your agency has, that they need to run smoothly. I like to think of it as where the front office of if you think of a school system, are the teachers hired? Are the bills paid? Do the computers work? Are rules being followed? Do we have pencils and paper to do what we need to do? Essentially, is what org comp is. And I know PHAB (Public Health Accreditation Board), they have a very long definition of what it is, but that’s how I like to think about it.

So, keeping that in mind in that area, what is North Carolina doing in order to move the needle in org comp? So Marina also put this graphic together, and she likes to say, we need to be equipped, ready together. So with our financial capabilities, we established a task force, which is where people from the Division of Public Health, PHIG partners, our local health department, local health departments, and our regional workforce directors. They all come together every quarter, we sit, we talk, we review the assessment data, the numbers, where is everybody at the local level, state level, county level, how are we doing in the areas of the foundational capabilities? What are some ideas we can do to help move the needle, to improve in our gaps? What is working where? Are we doing well and how can we do better as a unit, as a state, and be ready to grow and train together?

So transparency moment in 2023 in org comp, as you can see, is the number eight. We ranked number eight in org comp in that area as a state, and at the local level, it is something that everybody said we needed to do better at. 2024 as you can see, nothing has changed mind you, me and Marina did not get here until 2024 I just want to point out. So we were still in the planning, trying to implement phase. And also, I don’t think I mentioned this, PHAB breaks it down by capacity and expertise when it comes to org comp. And I view that capacity is, are people in place? Do they have the tools that they need, and do they have the time to do what they need to do? Expertise is, do they have the skills? Do they have the experience and the training? So, coupling all that together, we’re not doing well. And we recently got the numbers for 2025, and we have a retreat coming up in September to discuss those results. We’re still not doing well. Mind you, we did not get here till 2024.

Just a transparency moment. So, evaluating this, seeing the data, seeing how our employees feel about how we’re doing in that area. How can I evaluate this, take this, take in everything that the task force says? Okay, this is how we move the needle in this area. How can I set up a plan to evaluate and show we are moving the needle in these other things that we’re doing to move the needle? So once I came in and got hired, one of the things that I was tasked to do was to get trained in RBA. Has anybody heard of RBA? Show of hands. Can somebody tell me what RBA is? Feel free to read the slide.

I’ll read the slide. Okay. RBA is the Results-Based Accountability Framework, which basically uses a data-driven approach to evaluation and focuses on measurable impact and continuous improvement. So, three questions that I ask everybody that I work with on a daily basis: how much are you doing? How well are you doing it? And is anyone better off? This is what I do and use throughout everything we’re doing PHIG-related, even with our contracted partners. When we task them with something, they come back with their own evaluation plan. My job is to look at it and be like, how much are we doing? Can we see how well we’re doing it based on this, and is anyone better off from it?

So one of the tools that we use in order to make sure I’m on track with answering these questions is we use a clear impact scorecard, and it breaks things down by what the main result we’re trying to achieve is. What are the population indicators affected by this? And then you can list out each program and the performance measures related to that program. So, an example of this is the major result that we’re trying to accomplish, which is improving our public health infrastructure. Do we have people in place? Are they trained? Are they experienced? Do they have their skills? Essentially, that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the big result. The population indicator that shows us if this is being done or not could be our retention rate, our vacancy rates. Do staff feel they have the opportunities to grow within the agency?

This is something that shows the entire population of our agency and our local health departments as a whole. This lets us know if we’re doing our job or not. Essentially, are we making and moving the needle in that area towards our result? Breaking it down further, what are the programs that move the needle when it comes to our retention rate, when it comes to our vacancy rates, and the culture of our agency as a whole? So one of the programs, as an example, is our pathway programs, or our fellowship or internship program. So that’s the program.

Some performance measures for those programs include the number of interns or fellows we hire, the percentage increase in their knowledge since the start of the internship, and whether they’re considering pursuing a job or career at DPH or within public health or governments of public health. And so, yeah. So that is how I measure how much we’re doing, how well we’re doing it, and is anyone better off? And later on the presentation, I’m going to ask you guys questions so you can see if you can identify which measure is which.

Okay, and so some ways that I make sure I’m tracking these performance measures and making sure we’re quarterly updating our scorecard. We have bimonthly meetings with our stakeholders, so people who are in charge of each program, they come they report on this is what we accomplished during this timeframe. I report the data metrics based on the performance measures associated with their program. Of course, we have our CDC-mandated performance measures, and we have additional internal performance measures. And then I also, every quarter, I ask our stakeholders, can you give me a success story, something that you accomplished? And I report that as a quick win to CDC, and when we meet with our project officer. And so, yeah, any questions about that?

Okay, so diving further into our task force and our partnership with one of our academic partners, the University of North Carolina, they have an Institute of Public Health, so like I said, they’re in charge of the task force. We contracted out because we did not have the capacity or wherewithal to ensure the task force was implemented, up and running, and so on. We’re just, it’s me, Marina, and like three other people, we just didn’t have the capacity to do that as a PHIG team. So we contracted out, and again, with the task force, we gave them the funding. They disperse across the state, at the local level, regional level, we come back, we review the assessment, we try to make decisions on where to put more funding and where to invest in based on the data from the assessment.

And we’re bringing everyone in the room together so we can discuss. This is what’s working in my department. This is what’s working at my agency. This is what’s not working. We need funding here. We need to hire people here and so on, so forth. Again, having a meeting of the minds. And, like I said, there are DPH leaders, local health directors, regional workforce directors, and academic partners. Sometimes we’ve had a national partner come in from CDC, and have to have to make sure that the discussion is moving the way that it needs to do so diving deeper into org comp, what we’re doing, these are some of the things that the task force came up with that they thought would move the needle and help us have a better ranking when it comes to org comp.

They wanted to implement an early-career Leadership Development Program. It’s a cohort-based course on resources for staff who are just coming into public health. They’ve been here for like three to five years, and they want to grow to become agency leaders. They also wanted to develop an executive leadership development program that was a four-month cohort, a structured curriculum with coaching, and up to 26 staff. That’s all the space that we have for that. And then implementing a theory and practice TA (technical assistance) sessions, so virtual sessions with asynchronous resources that people could use to help them improve in their foundational capabilities, in their branch, in their section, so on and so forth. And as you can see, these are a couple of the metrics, the number of people who participated pre and post tests on capacity and expertise to perform these activities, and then the percentage of staff who feel more connected to their understanding and how they lead, and what areas they lead, and so on and so forth.

So, as an evaluator, taking the programs that the task force said that they want to do, taking what they said they wanted to do, these are the metrics that I came up with. Three of them, anyway. There are like 10, but these are the most important ones that I came up with, or that we came up with as a team. Can anyone tell me which measure tells us if anyone is better off? Now I’m gonna go back by looking at these. If you look at let’s focus on the early career track, leadership development one. Which of those measures do you think suggest to us who is better off from this program or from this activity? I’m sorry, why?

Audience Member #2:
Because it’s asking about their participation and helping them to feel better or more capable moving forward.

Danyae Bellamy:
Exactly, good. So I explained it well, okay, great. Yeah, so that’s a great way to kind of let you know if you guys decide to go back and use this framework yourselves, making sure that you can answer these questions like, Okay, are we tracking how much is being done? Are we tracking how well we’re doing this program and activity? Is it effective, and is anyone better off from it? Another way we’ve been trying to move the needle in org comp is through another partnership with an academic partner in a different part of the state that focuses on data science and workforce programs. This also checks the box in some of our three work areas with data modernization, training, and hiring people in the data science space. So two birds with one stone.

And in doing this, we partnered with the academic partner. They did a workforce assessment to see our capacity and expertise in the realm of data modernization, and we were able to kind of align the results from that assessment to some of the programs that the task force said that they wanted to do anyway. So again, we’re assessing, we’re planning, implementing, and monitoring, and it’s a constant cycle in various areas. So some of the things a task force thought would be great and programs they wanted to implement were a skill-building workshop for fellows, a workforce workshop focused on data modernization for staff, a skill-building program, and a leadership development program for data science managers.

So, as the evaluator, I’m looking at these activities and trying to figure out: okay, how much are we doing? How well are we doing it, and is anyone better off? And again, using the RPA framework to do so, and to do that is just another activity that checks the box, not only in org comp, but in A3 so kind of, we’re assessing everything that we’re doing in a way that’s low effort, high impact, or high effort, high impact, just to get a gage on what some things that we could do quickly to try to get the numbers around by the time we do the assessment again in 2026. So I’m curious to hear, what are your agencies doing to strengthen org comp? Does anybody care to share infrastructure?

Audience Member #3:
So our industry is trying to determine what the department should look like going forward. I’ve done some forecasting work for them. They have history, because they’ve been a department way longer than I have, and we’re dissolving some spaces and reorganizing some things, and we’ve already put new leadership in certain spaces, like our business unit, which does our contracting and stuff like that. So I think once we get all those decisions made and everything in place, our organization will be a little stronger, yeah.

Danyae Bellamy:
What state are you from? Okay, great. Being from North Carolina, I have a favorite rapper. He’s kind of famous; his name is J Cole, just a little famous. One of his lines: he’s like, “change is slow.” It always has been and always will be. So I always keep that in the back of my head. You should make sure you call J Cole. Now I don’t know if he came up with that or got it from someone else, but yeah, anybody else care to share?

Well, cool. Thank you for sharing. And if anybody wants to share, what’s something your agency could benefit from in the org com space? Like, if you had a wish list, CDC gave us more money at the end of 2027. What do you think you guys would do next in the space of org comp? I’m interested in it now, so I could take it back to my team.

Audience Member #4:
Yes, we could benefit from it, like an organizational plan, or, like, here’s how we do our work, and I’m with the local government, and it sounds like a lot, but I think it really would support staff and understanding how, the how and the why of our work, and as staff are turning over, can we, you know, document they can refer to? So, to the whole slow change is slow, like that’s something that could take, you know, two to four years to develop, but could be really impactful.

Danyae Bellamy:
Yeah, I agree with that. Thanks. Anybody else in the back here?

Audience Member #5:
So I’m an evaluator, and I think we need more internal evaluation capacity. There’s a stronger mandate to evaluate our programs, identify what’s working and what’s not, and use data to make decisions. That’s all an evaluator’s role. And we have a lot of capacity for data analysis, for surveillance, for epidemiology, but we don’t have it specifically for evaluation. And I think there’s a gap there, so I’d love to see that.

Danyae Bellamy:
Wonderful agreed. Anybody else?

I think I would concur with what both of you guys said, having more people to sit and assess, to let you know, hey, we need to improve here, or this is not working. This is working. And sometimes when you only have one person doing that, they could get burned out really fast. So balls get dropped, things get missed, and things fall into cracks. S,o of course, hiring more people would be great. So, going back to the evaluation framework, as I said, the things that North Carolina tries to keep in mind, what is the end result? What do we want? What is, as a population, as an agency, something that can indicate that we’re moving the needle to get to that result? And how to measure that is, how much are you doing? How well are you doing it? And is anyone better off? I cannot stress that enough. It’s something that we echo daily, and so, yeah, right here, you had your hand raised.

Audience Member #6:
So what was your result statement for the slide where you had, like, retention and vacancy rates as your headline indicators? I did not see your results statement, so I’m curious what it was.

Danyae Bellamy:
A great question.

Audience Member #6:
Yeah, so for this, what’s your result statement?

Danyae Bellamy:
So the result statement I have is: our ultimate goal is to improve public health infrastructure, to make sure we’re doing what we’re doing well, effectively, and to ensure we have people in place to do it. That’s the overall result of improving our public health infrastructure. Does that answer your question?

Audience Member #6:
It does. Yeah, it does. Thank you.

Danyae Bellamy:
Any more questions? That was my last slide, so I’m open for questions. Well, all right, how,

Audience Member #7:
What are we doing? How well are we doing getting who is and who is better off, and because of it? Do you think that it has been a good way to communicate with staff, because sometimes the language can be above their heads, and then you don’t get a response because they don’t know what you’re asking? So have you found that breaking it down in that way has made it easier for you to get the responses that you’re looking for?

Danyae Bellamy:
Yes. Slow answer, yes. And I say that because when I started at DPH, I came in as an intern in the cancer branch, and then transitioned to a temp employee, and then to a permanent employee in the division office. So, seeing the transition, we didn’t have an RBA framework when I first started out. We didn’t have a standardized system; everybody used every section, used a scorecard to communicate how much you’re doing, how well you’re doing it, and whether anyone is better off for your work that didn’t exist six or seven years ago when I started. So now, transcending and looking at it from a different perspective. Now, all of our sections use a clear impact scorecard. They have, what’s that meeting called? What’s that meeting called? That Will does every quarter with each section, they present like their work, and they do a deep dive into their performance measures to articulate to the division or to the higher-ups. This is what we’re doing.

This is, I think, because we’ve routinely asked and tried to get everybody to transition to using the same language, so now everybody is starting to be on the same page. But at first, of course, when we were first saying, hey, we’re going to use the RBA framework. Everybody was like, What is RBA? What are you talking about? So again, change is slow. It takes time. But after you continuously communicate and try to get everybody standardized on the same thing, it definitely becomes easier. Does that answer your question?

Audience Member #7:
Yes.

Danyae Bellamy:
Okay. Anybody else? Well, thank you, guys, for listening.

Brian Lentes:
Well, thank you to New York and North Carolina for presenting some great information today. So we’ll take the next few minutes for some Q&A on either state. I know we did a little bit just now. I do have a few questions myself, but I’ll hold off to see if anybody has any questions for either state, and we’ll make sure you have the microphones too, so those online can hear.

Audience Member #8:
Good afternoon. I’m Luana from Tulsa, Oklahoma, workforce director, and this was for Keshana and Eric, for the I love the statement that I made public. Make public health public. I love that. So I may use that. So just FYI, but I know you mentioned there was a webinar series, and I saw on the slide that there was an academic webinar series. What was, what’s within the series, what topics? How was that implemented?

Keshana Cody:
Okay, so it hasn’t been launched yet. Friday is the first webinar. So Friday, we’re having a, it’s kind of like an, I would say it’s a national, I can share the information with you. It’s on Friday during the lunch hour. We’ve invited all academic institutions. Our academic liaison reached out to all the colleges that she’s been working with, but also to schools that we haven’t worked with. We’re going to present the PHIG grant. It’s something we’ve been wanting to get off the ground for a while, and then after that, she’s going to have a series of different ways that we can partner with academic institutions.

So we’re kind of introducing them on Friday, but then it’s going to include internships. It’s going to include potential community partnerships together. So the internship will be the big one. But then also, how can we come into the school and provide like? Do they need, maybe, guest presenters to come to their schools as well? So there’s going to be, it’s, it’s going to grow over time, but it’s, our kickoff is on Friday, and then we’re going to have, I believe, like monthly webinar series that will take place, just to engage the academic community and recognizing there’s lots of different ways to partner with the Department of Health, and some may not even recognize that there are opportunities to partner with the Departmentof Health.

Brian Lentes:
I’ll add one thing to that, too. I know the PHIG partners, the national partners, coordinated with the Public Health Foundation, which also recently updated its academic health department toolkit. Okay, so if you go to PHF’s (Public Health Foundations’) website, it may also be on the PHIG Partners website, but I know it’s definitely on the PHF website. And there have also been some webinar series, I believe there’ll be some probably in the fall, for academic, health department, and establishment.

Others in the back?

Audience Member #9:
For the wellness, for the win, and the recognized digital toolkit. Is that something that can be shared with us? Or is that available online? You can think about that.

Keshana Cody:
It’s currently not available online. We can look into sharing externally. It just has to go through our external process of approvals. But yes, we can look into that. Okay, definitely share that.

Audience Member #9:
And then I had one other question. I think I saw one of your slides that said it was joint approval for FTE positions. Does that mean your PHIG positions are FTEs (Full-Time Equivalents) rather than temp grants? Or was that for other positions?

Keshana Cody:
They’re FTEs. So they’re not temporary.

Audience Member #9:
Okay, so then I heard you guys had about 100 of those. What is your plan for after 2027, given that they’re FTEs and not temp grant positions?

Keshana Cody:
Yeah. So we’re already having these conversations. We actually just did some of these slides. Actually, we just did a cross-cutting meeting across the Department of Health as a whole to present. Here’s where we are with the grant. We’ve and over time, I would say we’ve been very transparent of where we were with the grant, how much we we anticipate we’re going to need to convert over into either state positions and or need sustainable funding, definitely, with the with the climate brand, with the uncertainty we’ve already we were already on track to have these conversations, but we’ve been alerting along the way, like we’ve been looking at different our overhead, all these things, but now where we are sitting, it’s looking at all different positions.

So we’ve been looking at all the grants, but we recently had another cross-cutting meeting to present the date, the facts, and the data in front of everyone so they can see where the positions are. What’s the impact I know I shared before I’m big on org charts. We showed, instead of just saying, here’s all the positions, because we can do that on a spreadsheet. We showed where the positions are, and where the impact will be as well. So we’re starting those conversations or continuing those conversations now.

Eric Shircliff:
Yeah, just, just to add to that, one of the things we didn’t share, which is a win, is our org chart, and, and, and what’s changed there, structurally, since the introduction of the grant. When the grant started, we were a grant team, which is kind of like an appendage, a fringe on the side of some org chart somewhere, with the dotted line and with two-ish years in right. The change was, there was a creation of a division of public health infrastructure, which Keshana is now, is now the director. So that housed the grant team, kind of the core team, the public health, continuing education, and the other units that we reviewed that were already under the grant.

But it also brought in our fellowship program and Office of Local Health Services, which previously existed elsewhere in the org chart. I don’t know exactly where they were, but they were kind of wrapped under the Division of Public Health Infrastructure. And you know, I can’t speak to the sustainability conversations being had, but the grant was enveloped. It was, you know, integrated into the organizational structure of the Office of Public Health, and that’s reflected, really, at the highest level of the org chart. So there’s a lot of positions under the grant, but there’s, there’s also a significant number kind of in that core team.

So that’s all, unless anybody else has org chart questions. No logic model questions. Just kidding, save those. I don’t want any lot of small questions.

Kristin Sullivan:
There’s an online question for New York, and it’s from Alicia Wright Lewis. And she says, nice idea to hold town halls to address A2 on a large scale to stakeholders and responsible parties. What levels did you include? Was it effective? And how frequent are the meetings? Please also confirm that you host smaller group meetings for A2.

Keshana Cody:
So for A2 continuation meetings we held, I’ll say it was three meetings just to get us to because we had to have the deadline of everybody submitting everything so that we can submit by the 25th every center within the Office of Public Health, their directors were invited, and the staff that are tied to that have been tied to previously, I would say A2 year, one year, two big funding were invited. It also included our regional office directors, because they have funding tied to that. We had three sessions, I think.

We also provided individual support with each center, just in case there were any technical assistance needs. The presentations were pretty robust, like the ones we did in the first round. I’ll say this: before we had the town hall, we had, like, just an overview of A2 and which forms needed to be submitted. We broke down all of our activities that the grants administration would need. So I presented one portion, our grants administrator presented one portion, and then Eric presented on the evaluation piece, because we also have performance measures and all those things to submit against as well.

And then we had the office hours. Those were, there were, like, three office hours that took place after that. We meet with, or we’re going back to meeting with our center directors on a monthly like we’re actually our admin team is working on moving us back to meeting monthly with each center, just so that we’ve produced a lot of different documents to support them, like their budgets, like we’ve made individual budgets, so that they can understand the funding that’s tied to them, but then also the work plan goals.

We want to be more upfront and more accountable going forward, and make sure that everybody’s executing and getting all their funding out. We also have a monthly town hall for subcontractors for those who are managing subcontracts to make sure that there are no challenges happening with managing those subcontracts. The funding is flowing correctly. So that’s another reason that the meeting has been taking place for the past year, which is giving support to those who are managing subcontracts in A2.

Audience Member #10:
Thanks for your presentations. A question, I think, for both groups is one of the main outcomes, intended outcomes, for PHIG, of course, is keeping staff retention as measured by the retention rate. But as we all know, that’s affected by so many factors external to our organizations, even external to our states, and that we have zero control over. So how do you talk about that with staff? In terms of saying, you know, this is our main outcome indicator, you know, and we’re doing all this great stuff, and, you know, maybe we’re even looking at the short-term outcomes, you know, of increased staff, you know, feelings of psychological safety or wellness that should contribute to retaining or staff staying. But the rate may be going up and down for reasons entirely unrelated to our efforts. And so I’m just curious if that’s come up yet, or how you talk about that, or sort of, you know, negotiate that tricky issue.

Danyae Bellamy:
I was just saying this is a little above my pay grade. I’m not having those conversations, but in the background, as the evaluator, it’s been brought to my attention. Why do our rates keep going up and down? And as you said, a lot of things have happened over the past year that could be affecting those numbers. And so a large thing that I’ve advocated for or pushed for is making sure we’re doing things that are in our control. So employee engagement, what are we doing for employee recognition, things that we can contribute to, what is our plan and action to contribute to those? Because everything else we can’t affect or change. So as long as you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, and you can be comfortable and happy with okay, we’re doing what we can do, and whatever happens out of our hands. Does that answer your question?

Eric Shircliff:
Yeah. It’s those. The conversations that we’ve had are mostly kind of internal as we review that, because initially, our priority related to the performance measures was hiring and hiring timeliness, right? So retention, we’re always looking at it and you know, it’s, it’s definitely been changing. You know, in this last period from June to May was especially turbulent. But I think, you know, that’s kind of how we talk about it amongst ourselves, and that’s probably what we would share with everyone else, that there’s a world of things that are outside of our control. And through that, though, our staffing rates have remained very high, right?

So there’s turnover, but the workforce numbers kind of as a whole, at least in New York State, you know, aren’t, aren’t suffering. And so, because everybody knows that there’s turnover, there’s kind of always been turnover for us as we have two employers. There is always a certain amount of turnover and movement, especially on the federally grant-funded side. And there’s some movement between the state and the nonprofit arm as well. But yeah, I think it’s a great thing to remind ourselves of. There’s a certain number of things that we can control, right?

And beneath all of our performance measures, there’s, there’s those kind of things, right? There’s, there’s stuff that about hiring our hiring managers have control over, because it’s stuff that’s on their desk, right? So when it goes to HR, it’s that’s HR stuff. And we can’t really affect a lot of change in a big Human Resources system embedded in a giant institution. We can offer some suggestions, but to think about how to improve efficiencies in hiring and hiring timeliness, let’s talk about stuff that we do as hiring managers, right? Let’s talk about that and the same to retention, right? Let’s think about improving our culture, employee satisfaction, those kinds of things.

Keshana Cody:
Just wanted to add. Something that I have noticed, and Eric probably caught this too, is that there’s an uptick in our public health continuing education unit as well as EAP (Employee Assistance Program). We collaborate with the EAP. We work with them quite a bit. Actually, some of our A1 funding is is being, is directed to them as well. We’ve noticed an uptick in staff having lots of different questions related to wellness and career mobility, which is a big focus of ours going into year four.

It’s actually called out in our A2 year four plan. But that’s, I’ve seen it as if we probably bridged our return, like our data with our public health continuing education team, they’ve been asked to come in to do a lot of different trainings and supports for leadership and for staff as it relates to career mobility. So that might be an opportunity that we might be based on the question that you just asked, is bridging those two teams, because we’ve definitely seen an uptick in requests for trainings related to potential uncertainty, new jobs, different things like that as well. That could influence some of our retention data as well.

Brian Lentes:
Okay, well, I think we’re about at time. I just want to thank you all for coming out here this morning and listening to our speakers. Thank you very much.