Strategic Skills Collaborative

  • 1.  PHLE: Course 1 Discussion Board

    Posted 18 hours ago

    Hi PHLE Participants!

    Many of us are spending time right now thinking about systems and strategic thinking in public health, which is also the strategic skill focus for April in the virtual community. This includes looking more closely at how policies, structures, and long‑standing practices shape the issues we work on every day.

    In Course 1 of Public Health Leadership Essentials, one idea that is emphasized early on is slowing down before jumping to solutions. Rather than moving straight to programs or interventions, we are being asked to step back and ask questions like:

    • What systems are influencing this issue?
    • What assumptions are built into how we define the problem?
    • What feels fixed, but may actually be shaped by policy, funding, or structure?

    For those of you participating in PHLE right now, I would love to hear:

    Has anything in the first module helped you see a familiar public health issue differently, even in a small way? This could relate to funding, data, partnerships, workforce, policy, or community engagement.

    Looking forward to your thoughts! Remember: short reflections or bullet points are absolutely welcome



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    Sabine Jamal
    Cornell University
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  • 2.  RE: PHLE: Course 1 Discussion Board

    Posted 17 hours ago

    At the moment, nothing has stood out, but the diagram for collective impact is really interesting. We've tried to implement that framework in the past for a grant and took away a lot of the high level practices for engagement, but did not get much further than that. This model is very detailed and helpful to think about all the other inputs and factors that can lead to sustained impact. I'm excited to learn more about that and application. 

    I think the difficult hurdle at the moment is with all the federal changes, cuts, funding sweeps or clawbacked dollars, it is difficult to project and plan systems wide change. We have shifted or tried to shift to PH2.0 to PH3.0 but find ourselves with far less resources to do PH3.0. Anecdotally, how much institutional knowledge loss have we experienced to do PH2.0? 

    The silver lining is, there are a lot more folks being vocal about their values and engaged and hope to see this catalyst build a strong foundation of allies.



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    Sam Jarvis
    Community Health Manager
    Johnson County Public Health
    Iowa City IA
    (319)356-6040
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: PHLE: Course 1 Discussion Board

    Posted 17 hours ago

    This was my first attempt to look at a Public Health issue, and it was eye opening.  Coming from a more process focused environment, where cause and effect are obvious, this was intimidating.  I want to look at mental health and substance use issues, and there are dozens of structural and non-structural potential impacts.  I hope the framework makes it easier to analyze the situation and create "bite sized" areas for investigation and intervention.  This is very interesting and helpful. 



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    Pamela Kuehling
    Government Services Analyst
    City of St. Louis Department of Health
    Saint Louis MO
    (314)657-1564
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    Original Message


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