Saturday, January 18, 2025
1/18/2025
Mecklenburg County Public Health Department, commonly referred to as Mecklenburg County Public Health (MCPH), is applying for the CDC-OE22-2203 Strengthening U.S. Public Health Workforce, Infrastructure and Data Systems grant. MCPH is a NC Health Department Accredited with Honors in 2019 by the NCLHDA Board, is managed by Health Director, Raynard Washington, PhD, MPH, and is comprised of 940 employees serving approximately 1.2 million Mecklenburg County residents, including the City of Charlotte with a population of 874, 579 (Source: 2020 Census). The COVID-19 pandemic changed the public health landscape and shifted staff and resources towards prevention efforts and reallocation of services, sidelining processes and procedures to focus on the public’s health and wellbeing. The effects of COVID-19 exacerbated the impacts of social determinants of health on populations living within the Public Health Priority Areas in Mecklenburg County, where some of the most socially vulnerable residents reside based on Community Health Assessment data. The large number of COVID-19 deaths within the Public Health Priority Areas within Mecklenburg County made it evident that MCPH must realign resources to ensure health equity for all populations across Charlotte. Therefore, MCPH is applying for Strategies A1 & 2: Workforce and Foundational Capabilities funding to assess, restructure and build organizational capacity to better meet the changing needs of the community and employees. Strategy A1 Workforce funding will help MCPH to build a more robust workforce capacity to reduce individual workload across all divisions and to improve retention. With improved retention will come the ability to strengthen infrastructure through a more unified customer service trauma-informed training for staff to use with both external and internal partners and colleagues. MCPH will add 19 positions across many divisions to add support, diversity and expertise to the MCPH workforce to better serve internal and external partners. Strategy A2 Foundational capabilities funding will help MCPH to evaluate processes, policies, procedures and internal communication. With the evolving needs of the county, the MCPH workforce needs to remain prepared to respond to COVID-19 yet trained to pivot to address other community infectious disease outbreaks like Monkeypox. After years working in a public health emergency climate, MCPH staff and leaders need training on research-based best practices to ensure staff have the most updated knowledge and resources to serve clients and residents across Mecklenburg County. Workforce planning, systems, processes and policies need evaluating for continuous improvement efforts. With new technology to improve data democratization, MCPH will be positioned for better transparency and equitable access to data for all residents of Mecklenburg County. With any change, comes growing pains, and this funding request for both Strategies A1 and A2 is to increase workforce capacity across all areas of the Mecklenburg County Public Health Department to ensure MCPH staff are trained, equipped and connected to fulfill the mission – “to promote and protect the public’s health” as they pivot from a pandemic state. To do so, MCPH must modernize data systems, improve communication and community partnerships and fortify processes, policies and procedures for efficiency and to provide health equity to all Mecklenburg County residents. Each of the key proposed activities in this grant application align with the department’s fiscal years 2023-2025 Strategic Business Plan (SBP) strategies; thus, the environmental scan conducted for the SBP via the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), Employee Climate Survey data, Youth Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (YBRFSS) and the Mecklenburg County COVID-19 Recovery and Renewal Taskforce data are all foundational to the grant activities and outcomes outlined in the grant application.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).