CDC-RFA-TO-23-0001: Strengthening Public Health Systems and Services in Indian Country - The Tule River Tribe of California is a federally recognized Tribe in the California HHS Region and within the California Area of the Indian Health Service, served by the Tule River Indian Health Center, Inc. There are numerous public health challenges and inequities within the Tule River community. Our most pressing public health question is not, “What do we do?” But rather, “What do we do first?’ The Tule River Public Health Authority proposes to use this cooperative agreement to pursue data modernization and workforce strategies to increase the capacity of its public health system in order to design data-driven services that will be most impactful to reduce health inequities. By the end of the project period, the goal of this project is to improve public health outcomes and reduce health inequities in the Tule River Community, as measured by improvement in at least 2 health outcome metrics, or decrease in inequity as compared to the state, local county, or other Tribal nation. In order to ultimately improve health outcomes and reduce disparities, our intermediate goals are (1) to improve public health organizational and systems capacity for our PHA, and (2) to increase availability of/access to public health programs, services, and resources that address health disparities and/or social determinants of health in the Tule River Community. The activities we aim to pursue under the data modernization strategy are: 1) collect and share data that provide information on conditions of public health importance and health status of the population, 2) analyze public health data and use results to improve population health, 3) identify, engage partners in identifying and refining the data set access points, permission and available analysis tools, and 4) support enhancements that enable interoperability and bidirectional data exchange between the PHA and partners in state and local public health departments and clinical care. The activities we aim to pursue under the workforce strategy are: (1) encourage the development, recruitment, and retention of qualified public health workers, (2) identify and address continuing education for core and discipline-specific competencies and leadership development needs, (3) expand practice-based continuing education for public health professionals, and (4) identifying competencies and staffing positions within the department.
