Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2/5/2025
Tennessee Department of Health Public Health Infrastructure Application Abstracts ABSTRACT The United States’ public health infrastructure, workforce, and data systems have been greatly impacted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. As result, the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), like other public health agencies, have developed the need for initiatives and programming aimed at improving their infrastructure, rebuilding their workforce, and expanding their digital capabilities through data modernization methods. To address TDH’s needs, the agency and its leadership have developed a plethora of training opportunities, initiatives, and programming that have a focus on equity, professional development, and data expansion. TDH will use survey data from its 2022 Workforce Survey to guide the planned initiatives and programming that have been discussed within this proposal. TDH intends to perform the described activities through collaborating with local health departments, Tennessee schools of public health, local nonprofits, and professional certifying bodies. It is the goal of TDH to improve state efforts in advancing the health of all Tennesseans and TDH believes that the best way to achieve this is to start with strengthening its current infrastructure, workforce, and data systems. Strategy A1 Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the need to strengthen the public health workforce. The Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) cannot truly fulfill its mission to “protect, promote, and improve the health and prosperity of people in in Tennessee”, without investing in a competent public health workforce. TDH has proposed workforce strategies and initiatives focused on expansion and retention, supporting employee well-being, and training opportunities to ensure our public health workforce effectively serves Tennesseans. The TDH Workforce Development Director will guide proposed efforts with a health equity lens to address historically excluded groups including rural and racial/ethnic minority populations. TDH aims to increase hiring of diverse staff, increase size and capabilities of the public health workforce, increase reach of public health services, accelerated prevention, preparedness, and response to emerging threats, and improve public health outcomes. TDH will facilitate these efforts in collaboration with local health departments, Tennessee schools of public health, minority serving academic institutions (ex: HBCUs, HACUs), local nonprofits, and other external partners. Strategy A2 Abstract The purpose of these strategies is to improve efficiency in our procurement process, increase effective communication, and pursue accreditation. Though more funding is now allocated to public health efforts at the federal level, the infrastructure at the Tennessee Department of Health was lacking in the staff and workflow to handle such a large volume of funds, especially when it comes to the procurement process. A common issue with funding has been that by the time we are able to process contracts and proper procurement documents for goods and services related to grant work, much of the time to spend the grant money has passed. There is a need to quickly acquire needed goods and services with grant funding that has been given to the Department so that the money does not go to waste. Thus, many of the activities in this section focus on strengthening procurement ability and efficiency. We intend to hire more grant analysts and a legal reviewer to eliminate some bottlenecks in the procurement process. We also intend to hire a contract analyst for our division with the highest volume of contracts, Community Health Services (CHS). To ensure that our increased efficiency is sustainable and resilient to changes in staff capacity, we will also contract out a professional to direct and lead modernization efforts that will create streamlined, standardized processes for procurement in our department and create a transparent workflow that can
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).