History

In demonstration of their continued support for voluntary associations of local public health agencies, in 2004, the North Carolina Legislature granted funds to support the NC Public Health Incubator Collaboratives to improve public health outcomes. With these funds, the Northeastern North Carolina Partnership for Public Health (est. 1999) and three newly established partnerships, based on the Northeastern Partnership model, (Northwest Partnership for Public Health, Southern Piedmont Partnership for Public Health, and Western North Carolina Partnership for Public Health) quickly organized developing mission and vision statements, bylaws, and a self-defined governance process to begin the initial stages of collaborative development so as to begin addressing their top regional public health priorities.

In their first year of programmatic funding, the four partnerships worked to build regional capacity through efforts such as contracting with grant-writers to leverage funds, purchasing technology through economies of scale, and enhancing regional knowledge through shared trainings, experience, and expertise of participating health directors, staff, and partners. Other projects involved community health improvement initiatives such as social marketing campaigns and teen tobacco use prevention and cessation efforts. In addition, some regions worked to improve their organizational effectiveness through analyzing and suggesting best practices for billing and collections, developing new employee orientation materials, contracting with experts to study information systems, and preparing for accreditation.

In building on the momentum and progress from the first year, the Incubator Collaboratives were awarded additional legislative funding for the next two years to expand. Two new partnerships were established: Central Partnership for Public Health and the South Central Partnership for Public Health. Additional funding was also allocated to two statewide projects shared by all of the partnerships: one led by the North Carolina Alliance of Local Health Agencies and the other by the NC Division of Public Health's Diabetes branch.

The North Carolina Public Health Incubators Program continues to evolve as new challenges emerge and as public health practices change and improve over time. The purpose of Incubators is to foster innovative collaboration across local health department staff and to broaden resource sharing across rural areas of our state. This year has brought new challenges as the project funding of $900,000.00 has not been available for a second year; however, there is a notable transformation in the approach to collaborations themselves as public health leaders meet regularly to focus on common public health issues and prioritize their work together in light of the limited funding.

Incubators enable both local autonomy and the sharing of resources and ideas such that health departments can focus on local community health needs while benefiting from regional public health initiatives. Member health departments continue to:

• Plan and prioritize projects that benefit an entire region
• Develop competitive grant proposals that address common public health issues
• Improve capacity and staff productivity by sharing best-practices
• Enjoy economies of scale through collective purchasing and staffing
• Introduce solutions to address such things as dental services, heart disease/stroke prevention, obesity prevention, and adolescent health/substance abuse prevention.

The six partnerships of the NC Public Health Incubator Collaboratives (Central, Northeastern, Northwest, South Central, Southern Piedmont, and Western) continue to make a positive impact on the public's health in North Carolina.