About Minnesota's Work to Transform Public Health 

Everyone in Minnesota should have the opportunity to be their healthiest, no matter who they are or where they live. 

Public health workers, elected officials, and community members cooperate to overcome all types of barriers we face to living our healthiest lives.

However, Minnesota's approach to public health was designed nearly 50 years ago, and doesn't meet today's funding and resource challenges. It's time to invest in a new approach that embraces fair funding and creative collaboration to meet today's complex needs.

We envision a seamless, responsive, publicly-supported public health system that works closely with the community to ensure healthy, safe, and vibrant communities. This system of state, local, and tribal health departments will help Minnesotans be healthy regardless of where they live.

In Minnesota, this work to transform Minnesota's public health system is jointly led by the Local Public Health Association of Minnesota (LPHA), the State Community Health Services Advisory Committee (SCHSAC), and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH).

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What does it mean to transform Minnesota's public health system?

We work together to transform Minnesota's governmental public health system into one that's seamless, responsive, and publicly-supported. 

• A framework of foundational responsibilities defines what needs to be in place everywhere for Minnesota's public health system to work anywhere.
  • These definitions, criteria, and standards help us determine what's foundational, and how to determine whether foundational responsibilities are fulfilled in a jurisdiction.
• A Joint Leadership Team serves as stewards guiding transformation of Minnesota's public health system, made up of members from local public health, locally-elected officials, and state public health.
  • A roadmap strategically guides work that helps transform Minnesota's public health system.
• Locally-led innovation projects, supported by the Minnesota Infrastructure Fund, develop novel, creative approaches to improving the public health system by fulfilling foundational public health responsibilities, while challenging the status quo.
• Data modernization helps Minnesota's public health agencies share information, data, and resources quickly and effectively across geographies and sectors, to make data-driven decisions.
• Regional data models will help provide the staffing, knowledge, expertise, skills, and necessary infrastructure to increase an entire region’s ability to access, collect, use, manage, and share population health data.
• Governance groups and communities of practice provide a venue for local, state, and Tribal public health staff, and locally-elected officials, to work together and learn from each other.
• Strengthening Tribal public health capacity and infrastructure happens in parallel, as Tribal public health systems across Minnesota work to assess and strengthen their infrastructure and capacity, in their authority as sovereign entities.

Questions

Due to the collaborative nature of this work, please direct any questions or feedback to a Joint Leadership Team representative from your sector (MDH, local public health, or SCHSAC).