Fall 1999 Issue
Management and Accounting: The Tools to Overcoming Violence?
Fulton County, GA, hopes so. Public health officials there and elsewhere bone up on management skills through a new CDC Foundation program
It was a violent spring, one that Diane Lynch will never forget.
The year was 1996. Over the course of just a few months, 11 teenagers died from violent acts in the area around the urban New Jersey hospital where Lynch worked as a senior vice president. “I was astounded,” says Lynch, now deputy director of the health department in Fulton County, Georgia – another area plagued by youth violence. “I said to myself, ‘Children are dying. We have to do something.’”
Violence is one of the most serious issues facing public health officials today. Like other health issues, from HIV prevention to bioterrorism, it stems from complex roots and carries high societal costs. And so combating these issues requires public health departments to function more efficiently than ever before.
Now, there’s a new strategy to help. The CDC Foundation’s new Management Academy for Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is preparing officials in state and local public health departments to address the toughest health concerns of the day by strengthening management skills within the departments. A comprehensive nine-month course, the academy is hosting more than 200 workers from state and local health departments in Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Diane Lynch was a member of the academy’s first class this summer.
The coursework may not be glamorous – participants learn about finance, accounting, human resources and other management topics – but it’s essential for making health departments run better. Teams of officials complete the academy, then use the skills they learn to develop a “business plan” to attack a chosen public health problem.
Fulton County’s target problem is youth violence. With a small grant in hand, Lynch and her co-workers have begun organizing a pilot violence prevention program, but she says they have a long way to go. She has found that public health departments’ traditional ways of working – rolling up their sleeves, jumping in the trenches, solving problems one on one – are no longer enough.
“These problems require a new approach,” says Lynch. “They are so big and complex. It’s hard to put your arms around them … Our public health employees are extremely hard working, but they’ve never had any management training. We can’t work in a vacuum any more.”
The new playing field requires the ability to work in teams, plan strategically, quantitatively evaluate programs and attract and manage funding from many sources – a range of skills few public health workers have.
The management academy’s goal is to prepare public health workers for this new environment, says Steve Overton, project coordinator and a faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health. “Public health on the front lines has really changed,” he says.
“To be effective, local health departments must learn to operate more like businesses.” Bud Nicola, director of CDC’s public health systems division, which helped develop the management academy, says the project also makes sense from a taxpayer’s standpoint.
“The public is demanding accountability,” Nicola says. “That means public health managers need to know how to spend the public’s money well. this program does that.”
To fund the academy, the CDC Foundation is administering $4 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The academy’s participants, chosen from a highly competitive pool, attend classes on the UNC campus as well as via satellite and the Internet.
To fund the academy, the CDC Foundation is administering $4 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The academy’s participants, chosen from a highly competitive pool, attend classes on the UNC campus as well as via satellite and the Internet.
Thinking of management classes as a key to reducing teen violence may seem a stretch, but that’s the beauty of the Management Academy for Public Health. Diane Lynch and her colleagues in public health recognize that the fundamentals make the difference in addressing public health issues. Today, just a few years after that violent spring of 1996, Lynch has high hopes for her health department co-workers and the health of their community.
“We’ll all be more knowledgeable as we work on these issues,” she said. “The management academy comes at a great time for us.”
- Valerie Gregg