MVHI Launches Upper Valley Public Health System Development Project

CANAAN – The Mascoma Valley Health Initiative (MVHI) is leading a new project to build a high-functioning public health system in the 13-town Upper Valley Public Health Region of New Hampshire.

The main goal of this one-year project is to create a coordinated public health leadership structure that will enable the many entities providing essential public health services in the region to respond to emerging needs and sustain existing services through shared leadership, establishing strategic priorities, and jointly supporting program and fund development.

“The Upper Valley has so many incredible resources and positive working relationships in place.  Our plan is to help weave these resources together into a new blanket that will more efficiently and effectively cover local public health needs,” says MVHI Executive Director Alice Ely, MPH, CPS.

The Upper Valley’s numerous non-profit organizations and municipalities have a strong history of collaborating to understand and address the needs of people living and working in our communities. But these collaborations are often either time-limited, issue-specific, or under-resourced. In an environment where funding for public health programs is increasingly threatened by state and federal spending cutbacks, all organizations in the Upper Valley will benefit from the ability to better coordinate efforts to serve our population.

The State of New Hampshire is committed to encouraging the development of regionalized public health capacity, and proposes to increasingly award public health contracts to such entities. Due to the fragmented nature of the public health system, the Upper Valley region is presently at a disadvantage in its ability to compete for state and federal public health funding.

MVHI is now in the process of bringing together key partners to develop a shared vision of how to create a high-functioning public health system that would work within the organizational culture of the Upper Valley. Over the course of this year, MVHI and its partners will work together to craft a detailed plan for a public health system leadership structure, and develop the tools and agreements necessary to create this new structure.

This project is being funded by a grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, with a matching donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation.

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