Denver is home to 711,463 people. The City and County of Denver’s Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE), accredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board, serves Denver communities through a broad array of programming that is unique among public health agencies because its services extend beyond those mandated by its accreditation body. DDPHE includes six divisions: Community & Behavioral Health, Denver Animal Protection, Environmental Quality, Office of the Medical Examiner, Public Health Investigations, and Shared Services and Business Operations. While implementing its programs and services throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency, DDPHE’s staffing and infrastructure was strained to the point of breaking. The proposed project, Public Health Organizational Equity, Engagement & Excellence (PHOEEnEx—pronounced “phoenix”), will systematically integrate Denver’s values related to equity, diversity, inclusion and community partnerships across all three CDC-allowed strategies for Component A recipients. PHOEEnEx will:
1. Build a more diverse and inclusive workforce by recruiting through community and academic partners and providing career pathways and training opportunities
2. Address the department’s most urgent foundational capabilities, as identified in DDPHE’s 2020 assessment of core public health services, which were aligned with the Foundational Public Health Services (FPHS) framework
3. Modernize DDPHE’s data infrastructure to ensure increased responsiveness to community health issues across the agency
PHOEEnEX’s activities to support the A1 Workforce Strategy include increasing and diversifying its workforce by improving DDPHE’s structures and systems to ensure public health staff earn a living wage and work in occupations with well-defined career pathways that do not perpetuate economic disadvantage. To bring this vision to fruition, DDPHE will create paid student internships and expand its Community Health Worker Apprenticeship Program, including hiring Public Health AmeriCorps members, and creating an entry-level public health associate position, these positions will include on the job learning and related training. DDPHE will retain or hire staff to support the implementation of PHOEEnEX (i.e., a workforce director, a program evaluator, a grant administrator, a data analytics specialist).
PHOEEnEX’s proposed activities to increase its A2 foundational capabilities will increase its organizational competencies related to equity, community engagement and emergency preparedness and responsiveness transitions by building rapport and cultivating trusting relationships with hard-to-reach community members and organizational partners. All of DDPHE’s proposed A2 activities are intended to build the department’s capacity to create stronger partnerships across its divisions, with other City agencies and with community-based organizations; increase community members’ involvement and engagement in finding solutions to meet the community’s needs; improve its ability to provide programs that create equitable health outcomes by providing more programs and services to Denver’s hard-to-reach residents in partnership with community-based organizations; and increase its readiness to manage current and future public health emergencies.
PHOEEnEX’s activities to support A3 data modernization include assessing and building out the data infrastructure, interoperability and partnerships needed for its workforce to be more responsive to community needs. It will thereby effectively create the feedback loops needed to cultivate the organizational excellence needed to better serve communities, resulting in decreased health disparities and more equitable community health outcomes.
