The Maine CDC is proposing to build on its full-service health department’s Foundational Capacities to create a workforce development team within the agency, to continue work begun with COVID-19 response funding to enhance our workforce in specific areas that previously had critical gaps, to increase the capacity of our Public Health Units, and to support our eight local Public Health Districts, their District Coordinating Councils, and Maine’s Tribal Public Health District. In addition, Maine CDC will leverage existing funding to ensure the agency has the ability to meet all foundational capabilities, focusing on planning and information technology upgrades, and to continue to build and modernize our data infrastructure, in line with our ELC efforts and US CDC’s North Star vision.
With A1 Workforce funds, positions for a Workforce Director and Workforce Evaluation Specialist will form the core of the Workforce team, with in-kind contributions from a half-time Training Coordinator. A Data Modernization Director position will also be created. Additional positions supported with these funds will be transitioned from short term COVID-related grant awards. The positions include:
- Three positions within the Environmental and Occupational Health Program.
- Two school health positions, one full-time in the Division of Disease Prevention and the other 0.5 FTE in the Office of Maine Care Services.
- Three additional positions in the Division of Disease Prevention.
- One position in the Office of Population Health Equity.
- Two oral health positions in the Rural Health and Primary Care Program.
- Six public health educators to serve in our Public Health District Units and a Local Health Officer coordinator in the Division of Public Health Systems
The latter seven positions will be combined with funds provided directly to fiscal agents of the District Coordinating Committees to enhance that part of Maine’s local public health infrastructure. In addition, Local A2 Workforce funds will allow for ongoing workforce development in Maine’s two city-based public health departments, and State A2 Workforce funds will provide support to Maine’s Tribal Public Health District at a level comparable to the eight other Public Health Districts.
Key activities under A2 Foundational Capabilities include:
- The development of a consult tracking database.
- A contract to support strategic planning within the agency and the development of a new State Health Improvement Plan with external partners.
- Funding for contract epidemiologists and information technology staff to leverage existing efforts to increase the public availability of local data and streamline data analysis and visualization across the agency.
- A contract to increase the capacity of our instance of RedCAP with additional licenses and configurations.
Our A3 Data Modernization funds will enhance our ELC efforts by migration existing ESSENCE and NEDSS programs to cloud-based services, and by supporting increased expansion and interoperability of our Tableau Server-based data visualizations. The Data Modernization Director will develop an agency-wide data modernization plan and work closely with our ELC Principal Investigator and US CDC to align this work with their efforts.