Alabama’s Positive Transformation Through Cross-Cutting PHIG Workplans

February 26, 2024 | Mona Poblete

The Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) is a groundbreaking investment in health departments across the United States. With this new investment, health agencies must work across teams and programmatic areas to effectively implement new workplans while also taking time to reflect on the big picture of the work on PHIG, which is no small task.

The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) is an example of an agency that has successfully worked with a cross-cutting team to implement its PHIG workplan. This blog highlights the successes and challenges that ADPH shared during an ASTHO-hosted webinar on implementing PHIG workplans. ADPH focused on effective agency systems and communication for advancing PHIG workplan goals.

Impact of Successfully Coordinating Across Teams

ADPH applied for PHIG to better its workforce. It identified health department offices and partners to collaborate with and believed these opportunities for cross-cutting collaboration directly resulted from involvement in PHIG. Collaborations include:

• The Digital Media Division of Communications.
• The Office of Human Resources.
• The Financial Services Bureau.
• Program Grants Management staff.
• PHIG Grant Management team.
• Information Technology.
• Outside institutions (e.g., state personnel, community-based organizations, universities, high schools, and more).

Recruiting The Future Public Health Workforce

Through six of the eight health districts in Alabama, ADPH was able to fund district recruiting and provide education to university students on what public health is and what a public health career can look like; this has strengthened a pipeline for recruiting and targeting students who were uncertain of their career path.

Additionally, ADPH’s Health Media & Communications Division has been crucial when disseminating recruiting information through social media outlets (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Nextdoor), especially when certain jobs are more relevant to a particular region of the state.

Human Resources Cross-State and Bureau Collaborations

The Human Resources (HR) office noted improvements with this award, including digitization and automation updates of forms and electronic signatures in their electronic systems, the use of recruiters, increased intern retention, and better tracking for hiring timelines. ADPH communicated and collaborated with the California Department of Public Health to talk about a successful program that allows interns to transition into full-time employees.

HR also regularly meets with the Financial Services Bureau to brainstorm and discuss what technical assistance requests should be input into the Public Health Infrastructure Engagement (PHIVE) platform, job classifications, updating financial systems, evaluation, and all things grants.

Streamlining Grants Management Process

The PHIG Grants Management team also collaborates with Financial Services to make sure suitable measures are tracked and progress is made. They work with Financial Services to set up a chart of accounts for each strategy each year and set up budgets. The PHIG Grants Management team worked with the IT department to set up a shared drive for up-to-date spending records accessible to team leads. Lastly, their team organizes and receives all budget information and has noted improved record-keeping to ease the federal audit process. In return, Financial Services provides reports as needed, reviews expenditures and receipts, prepares drawdowns, completes Federal Financial Report, provides training, and participates in monitoring site visits and audits.

Establishing a Central Grants Administration Office

PHIG funding has opened doors to planning and setting up a Central Grants Administration Office, which will be made up of eight staff personnel members who will serve as subject matter experts. They will work hand-in-hand with the Finance/Grants and Contract Section, Office of Program Integrity, Legal, IT department, and program grant managers (i.e., the HR Grant Manager).

Planning Comprehensive Evaluation Initiatives

Though CDC only requires recipients to have two evaluation plans, Alabama is committed to doing three to track their PHIG-related successes. The three topics of their evaluation include 1) recruitment and hiring timeliness, 2) retention, and 3) training. The cross-cutting collaboration between teams requires coordination of successful data-sharing and has led to future planned evaluation projects to encompass personnel retention and training/workforce development. There are now plans to hire a full-time evaluator for these tasks.

Becoming Subject Matter Experts in Hiring

Another success that ADPH has seen is improvements in Alabama’s State Personnel Department’s hiring process by collaborating with other state agencies on salaries and descriptions, among other hiring practices. Employees of ADPH and other state agencies are recruited through the Personnel Department. With constant communication between all agencies, the other state agencies can assist with salary surveys, scoring applicants, and an increased pay plan. They now use some of the ADPH staff as subject matter experts for classifications for other agencies. While ongoing coordination in the state personnel hiring process remains a challenge, ADPH has found success and is embracing it as an opportunity to continue collaboration.

Challenges and Continuing Work

ADPH has experienced some ongoing challenges, including hiring and recruiting qualified candidates, vendors with limited staff, and a need to implement new systems. ADPH is developing new systems since vendors also have limited staff and recognize there is a need for systems to be in place to collect data on performance measures, including procurement timeliness, electronically.

Another challenge was spending PHIG year one monies. The Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) and Workforce Development Grant had extensions to continue positions created under these awards; therefore, PHIG year one monies were spent less. This created an opportunity to return to the drawing table and see how that funding could be re-budgeted.

Overall, it is evident that ADPH has been successful when working collaboratively across teams within their health department and CDC, and this serves as an example of how other health departments can utilize a cross-cutting team to implement their PHIG workplan. A participant asked Alabama, “How did you start working together?” Their answer was quick and simple, “It was a simple phone call.”