Strategic Skills

An interactive process of partnership and dialogue that leads to the exchange of information and ideas with a variety of groups in order to influence behaviors, policies, and social norms. Crafting effective communication requires centering an audience’s values, environment, and priorities and utilizing an array of formats well received by the target audience. Effective communication is participatory in its nature and seeks to empower intended groups and communities to create longlasting and transformative change.

Advancing JEDI involves an ongoing, intentional effort to create an environment where everyone has a fair opportunity to thrive, enjoy good health, and wholly participate in a full range of life’s activities. Supporting JEDI calls for both personal accountability and collaborative group efforts to examine power structures, listen and act on the perspectives and voices of underrepresented/historically marginalized groups, and ensure that all people have real, meaningful access to necessary resources and support systems.

Encompasses collecting, interpreting, and leveraging data—including “big data”—to identify salient patterns, answer relevant questions, and make effective decisions. The insights generated during data analytics translate into tangible, real-world change and lead to informed action.

A process through which current and future resources (including finances, staff, individuals with technical or subject expertise, technology, equipment, and any other component integral to organizational or programmatic operations) are strategically and efficiently allocated and deployed to the degree appropriate to achieve organizational and systems-level success and minimize waste.

Involves bringing together two or more distinct fields—such as health care and transportation—to yield greater impact and results. Public health professionals skilled in these types of partnerships will be able to foster and sustain meaningful, long-term collaborations that combine a unique set of resources, experience, and knowledge to more effectively and efficiently address complex, multifaceted issues (e.g., the social determinants of health). Public health is expertly positioned to convene these partnerships and help focus their efforts through a public health lens.

A holistic and dynamic understanding of interrelated complex structures—such as public health and health care—as well as the ability to recognize those systems’ influences at multiple levels and use those insights to align resources to achieve goals. It involves designing interventions that help people see the overall structures, patterns, and cycles in systems and allows for the identification of solutions that simultaneously leverage improvement throughout the system.

Refers to an authentic, mutually beneficial, and collaborative process of working to address issues that affect the health and well-being of particular communities, which often involves prioritizing health equity. Community engagement exists on a spectrum; involves equitable distribution of decision-making power and a focus on community partnering and collaboration; and is rooted in trust and respect.

A process to guide individuals, organizations, and systems through the transition from a current state to a desired future state, with an emphasis on learning and resiliency at all levels. Public health professionals skilled in change management will be able to set an example, inspire a shared vision, challenge the status quo, manage uncertainty, and encourage strengths-based action while navigating ongoing challenges to successfully realize needed change.

Involves working to inform, influence, implement, and evaluate legislation strategies at federal, state, and local levels in order to leverage long-lasting systems changes to protect and improve the public’s health and well-being.