Two new leaders stepped into their roles at North Dakota Health and Human Services (HHS) and were handed a challenge: build a training plan from the ground up. With minimal institutional history and limited internal data to draw on, they benefitted from the guidance and encouragement of several colleagues, including one in human resources, and used a powerful resource — the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS) — to launch the department’s first-ever quarterly training series.
The project began as part of the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG), which aims to strengthen the workforce at North Dakota HHS, a newly integrated health and human services’ agency. Behind the initiative were Jo Gourneau, REHS/RS — formerly a public health engagement specialist and now the systems and performance program director — and Rhoda Adewunmi, MPH, quality improvement and accreditation coordinator assistant. Both joined the department in 2023, bringing fresh energy and complementary skills to the project: Gourneau as a former high school science teacher, and Adewunmi as a recent MPH graduate with strong research skills.
“We took a leap of faith,” Gourneau said. “We knew training was going to be important. In North Dakota, we have more jobs than people, and one of the best ways to support our health and human services workforce is through continual learning and growth.”
But where to begin? What did employees need to learn most? And how should they prioritize?
Turning to PH WINS
Thanks to a tip from Stacy Hoffman, a human resources business partner and PH WINS Workforce Champion, Gourneau and Adewunmi discovered PH WINS. However, they quickly realized that the health department had too few responses in the 2021 survey to yield agency-specific insights. They turned instead to aggregate data from HHS Regions 7 and 8, focusing on training needs for non-supervisory staff. From there, they identified the top three priority domains lacking a robust training agenda and added a fourth category related to the legislative session, resulting in this final list:
- Budget and financial management
- Systems and strategic thinking
- Community engagement
- Legislative processes
They cross-referenced these priorities with existing training opportunities in ND TRAIN and other public health training centers, developing a survey that asked staff to rank real course topics like “making equity actionable” or “building community partnerships,” based on interest and relevance.
“Everything we included was a real course we could offer,” Gourneau said. “We wanted it to be practical and able to be implemented quickly.”
Listening Pays Off
Adewunmi built the survey in Qualtrics, and Hoffman distributed it to staff. “We wanted it to come from someone people were familiar with to increase response rates,” Gourneau said. The strategy worked. The survey garnered 154 responses in two weeks, an impressive 72% response rate despite the timing (mid-December to year-end).
Gourneau and Adewunmi used the results to design a quarterly training series with three courses per quarter — two asynchronous and one live virtual session. They hosted a mini town hall in January to share the survey findings and announce the training plan.
Quarter 1 offerings included:
- “Show Me the Money: How to Write Winning Grants,”
- A grant and budgeting workshop hosted in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Public Health Training Center (so popular, it met the registration threshold for the course to be limited to North Dakota public health participants), and
- An ND TRAIN course on federal grants management.
Other courses included “Storytelling with Data” and “Communication for Strategic Impact.”
Live sessions regularly drew up to 80 participants, including local, Tribal, and state public health professionals. “That was huge for our state,” Gourneau said. “I thought 15 to 20 attendees would be great. The turnout told us people appreciated being heard.”
We built something real, something responsive. It was workforce development in action.
Three Big Wins
Win 1: A Groundbreaking Training Series
With PHIG funding and PH WINS data, North Dakota HHS launched its first-ever quarterly, data-informed training program tailored to employee needs. Staff not only showed up — they engaged deeply.
One participant shared, “I enjoyed doing the example problems. It helped put what we learn into action.” Another noted, “It was a great refresher and expanded my viewpoint on how to tie budget with deliverables.”
For others, the format itself was a highlight: “Well organized,” one wrote, “and I appreciated having time to discuss it with colleagues to improve understanding.”
“We built something real, something responsive,” Gourneau said. “It was workforce development in action.”
Win 2: A Stronger PH WINS Culture
Gourneau and Hoffman made it a goal to increase PH WINS participation in 2024. They worked with health department section leaders and managers to set response rate goals, held weekly contests, gave shout-outs, and even awarded gift cards to select survey participants from each section. The payoff? Forty-four percent of staff completed PH WINS, well above their target response rate, making North Dakota HHS eligible for their own PH WINS dashboard.
“We’re excited to use that data to further refine our trainings,” Adewunmi said. “This time we’ll have even more intentional planning.” The goal is to continue the quarterly thematic training model, contingent on funding.
Win 3: Launching the North Dakota Public Health Leadership Academy
North Dakota HHS also launched the North Dakota Public Health Leadership Academy with support from the PHIG. Crafted using the Learning Agenda for Systems Change, this five-month program aims to develop change leaders from local, Tribal, and state public health organizations. Participants work individually and as a cohort to use systems thinking to tackle real-world challenges such as strengthening the public health workforce, expanding access and connections to essential services, and cultivating wellness and building community resilience.
“Leaders in the field are in a key position to drive systems change within their organizations and across communities,” Gourneau said. “The Leadership Academy, with the Rocky Mountain Public Health Training Center’s partnership, has helped public health leaders throughout North Dakota build their teams’ competency in systems change work.”
Lessons Learned and Looking Ahead
Gourneau and Adewunmi are already looking to improve and refine their approach.
“We didn’t have a formal evaluation plan the first time around,” Gourneau said. “Next time, we want to do monthly follow-ups to assess impact and make adjustments.”
One key lesson was the value of post-training evaluations. They only captured feedback after two sessions and regretted not embedding evaluation links into all live trainings.
“That would’ve given us better insight to fine-tune future content,” Adewunmi said.
They also missed recording one of the live virtual trainings due to miscommunication with the facilitator, underscoring the need to set clear expectations up front.
Another lesson was the importance of planning and engaging leadership in promoting PH WINS survey participation. To gain access to their own agency-specific dashboard, they had to hit a response threshold. They worked with leadership to promote the survey, created a friendly competition between sections and offered a small gift card drawing as an incentive. Not only were the internal challenges between Sections fun, especially for their competitive team members, but the results paid off and reinforced the importance of internal engagement strategies.
The project also had personal resonance. “I never imagined I’d be doing workforce development,” Gourneau said. “But now I see how my background in education fits in and how I can impact the whole system.”
“We each brought different strengths,” Adewunmi added. “Jo with her education experience; me with research, and we learned from each other. It changed how I think about performance, data, and leadership.”
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