Client NorthEast Public Health Alliance
Practice Area Coalition Management & Building
The NorthEast Public Health Alliance (NEPHA) is a Shared Services Arrangement (SSA) funded by the Public Health Excellence (PHE) grant program from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH). The Alliance was established in 2021 and comprises the Health Departments of Billerica, Chelmsford, Tewksbury, and Tyngsborough. All four communities are located in Middlesex County and serve a combined population of 120,426 residents.
Since NEPHA’s inception, it has worked to develop and expand regional programming, leverage shared resources, and enhance its public health workforce capacity across communities. The collective envisions a thriving, regional community where all residents, visitors, and businesses live healthy, fulfilling lives and have equitable opportunities and resources, leading to optimal health and social-emotional well-being.
The objective of the PHE grant program is to strengthen, and ultimately standardize, public health capacity and service delivery throughout Massachusetts through shared services arrangements. Despite previous years of informal collaboration within other regional organizations, the communities of the NorthEast Public Health Alliance were relatively new to working together as part of a SSA. Further, the four NEPHA communities vary significantly in terms of community size, available resources, staffing capacity, and departmental-responsibilities. These differences presented obstacles to determining the Alliance’s governance structure, capacity, and developing work plans.
NEPHA selected BME Strategies to provide shared services coordination, determine coalition processes, and facilitate the expansion of regional programs. The BME Strategies’ team established a cadence for monthly meetings to develop the Alliance’s governance structure and confirm processes, designed regional initiatives for service expansion and work plan development, and continuously refined internal processes to minimize the administrative burden on health departments.
Through discussions and previous assessment results, NEPHA and BME Strategies have identified areas of focus for programmatic planning, including enhancing inspectional consistency, expanding regional public health nursing services, and surfacing opportunities for workforce development.
Though the work of coalition building is a continuous project, below are examples of the work we’ve done with NEPHA:
Though the work of coalition building is a continuous project, below is a brief summary of projects completed during Fiscal Year 2023.
BME Strategies provided the NorthEast Public Health Alliance with the expertise and reliability required to establish and sustain a high-functioning shared services arrangement to improve and expand public health services across the region.