MPH 508 Week 7 Strategic Plan Example

Strategic Plan, 2027 to 2029: Where the Merritt County Health Department's Preparedness Program Will Put Its Limited Capacity, and What It Will Do Less Of

Student Name

Chamberlain University

MPH 508: Leadership and Administration in Public Health Systems

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Strategic Plan, 2027 to 2029: Where the Merritt County Health Department's Preparedness Program Will Put Its Limited Capacity, and What It Will Do Less Of

Purpose

This plan sets the priorities of the emergency preparedness program in Merritt County, the composite department used across this course, for July 2027 to June 2030. The program has two staff and about $310,000 a year in federal cooperative agreement funds, plus a one-year grant to rebuild its closed dispensing network. It cannot do everything its funders and partners ask. The plan therefore makes choices: three priorities, a list of activities that will receive less, objectives with owners and the conditions that would change course.

What the Scan Showed

The environmental scan drew on the department's exercise and after-action records, the 2026 organizational assessment, interviews with eight partners and the national capability standard (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). Four findings shape the plan. First, the department could not dispense medication to the county within 48 hours today, mainly because the closed dispensing network covers about 11,000 people against a planned 45,000. Second, residents who cannot reach a dispensing site, about 6,000 homebound or institutionalized people, have no plan. Third, the program's most experienced operational staff are leaving, and seven of twelve trained site leads have gone since 2022. Fourth, the program spends about a quarter of its staff time on activities partners value little, such as community preparedness fairs, which drew fewer than 200 people in 2025.

Three Priorities

Priority 1: a closed dispensing network that lasts. Raise closed sites from 9 to 30 by June 2028 and keep at least 27 active through June 2030, with every site holding a second named contact and a plan reviewed each year. Planners in other jurisdictions found that closed sites drift away without regular contact and that assessment is rare (Rebmann et al., 2022), and that sites assessed more often scored higher on preparedness (Rebmann et al., 2017).

Priority 2: reach for people who cannot come to a site. Write and test a plan to deliver medication to homebound and institutionalized residents, using home health agencies, long-term care facilities as closed sites and county transit, by June 2029.

Priority 3: an operational workforce that stays. Keep at least ten trained site leads in post at any time, through practice drills, partner contact roles and site lead duties written into job descriptions.

What Gets Less

Choosing three priorities means doing less elsewhere. The program will stop running community preparedness fairs, which took about 200 staff hours a year, and will instead provide preparedness information through partners' existing channels. It will reduce stand-alone tabletop exercises for hazards other than dispensing from three a year to one, joining the county emergency management agency's exercises instead of hosting its own. It will stop producing a printed annual preparedness newsletter. And it will decline new requests to present at community groups unless the group is a potential closed site. Each of these was valued by someone, and the plan names them so that partners are told rather than surprised.

Table 1

Activities Reduced or Stopped to Fund the Priorities

Note. Note. Hours are composite estimates from the program's 2025 time records.

Objectives With Owners

Each priority has measurable objectives and one owner. For Priority 1, the coordinator owns two objectives: 30 active closed sites by June 30, 2028, and every site visited in person at least once a year from July 2028. For Priority 2, the planner owns a written plan for homebound and institutionalized residents by June 30, 2028, and a tested plan, with a drill delivering mock medication to at least 100 homebound residents, by June 30, 2029. For Priority 3, the community health division manager owns the target of ten trained site leads in post, reported each quarter, because site leads sit in that division and retention depends on that manager's decisions about schedules and assignments.

Affordable at Current Capacity

The plan is built to fit two staff and the existing funds after the one-year grant ends. The roughly 420 hours freed by stopping or reducing activities pay for the annual partner visits and the homebound planning work. Practice drills are scheduled within divisions' existing time. The only new cost, a site lead skills differential of about $12,000 a year, requires a county budget decision; if it is not approved, Priority 3 will rely on job description changes alone, and the plan says so in advance.

What Would Change Course

Three conditions would trigger a review of this plan before 2030. A cut of more than 15% in the federal cooperative agreement would reduce Priority 2 to planning only, without the drill. A real event requiring mass dispensing would replace the plan with an after-action improvement plan. And if fewer than 20 closed sites are active by June 2028, the program will review why before recruiting further, since the national data suggest that sites recruited without the capacity to sustain them tend to lapse (Rebmann et al., 2014). The health officer will review progress each year with the board of health and publish a one-page update, so that the choices made here remain visible to partners and the public.

How Partners Shaped the Plan

The plan was not written only inside the department. Eight partners were interviewed during the scan: the county emergency management director, the regional hospital's emergency manager, two long-term care administrators, the distribution center's safety manager, the school district's assistant superintendent, a home health agency director and the county transit manager. Their answers changed two decisions. The emergency management director asked the program to join county exercises rather than host its own, which became one of the reductions in this plan. The home health agency and transit manager said they could help reach homebound residents if asked early, which made Priority 2 possible within current capacity. Partners also said, more than once, that the department called them only when it needed something. The plan's annual visits respond to that complaint directly.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). Public health emergency preparedness and response capabilities: National standards for state, local, tribal, and territorial public health. https://www.cdc.gov/readiness/media/pdfs/CDC_PreparednesResponseCapabilities_October2018_Final_508.pdf

Rebmann, T., Anthony, J., Loux, T. M., Mulroy, J., & Sitzes, R. (2017). Assessment of closed point-of-dispensing (POD) preparedness in St. Louis County, Missouri, 2012-2016. Health Security, 15(5), 539-547. https://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2016.0125

Rebmann, T., Foerst, K., Charney, R. L., Mazzara, R. L., & Sandcork, J. (2022). Challenges in managing, sustaining, and assessing closed point of dispensing sites: Findings from a qualitative study. PLOS ONE, 17(7), e0271037. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271037

Rebmann, T., Loux, T. M., Swick, Z., Reddick, D., Dolgin, H., Anthony, J., & Prasad, R. (2014). A national study examining closed points of dispensing (PODs): Existence, preparedness, exercise participation, and training provided. Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, 12(4), 208-216. https://doi.org/10.1089/bsp.2014.0014