Between five and eight health department winners of The Power of Policy: Innovation to Improve Health contest will receive awards from $25,000 to $40,000 and no-cost technical assistance from APHA for a period of approximately 10 months. A request for proposals for the contest was issued on December 14, 2011. The request was disseminated widely using APHA’s communication channels including a website, e-mail blasts, and social media postings, as well as those of CDC and APHA’s partners. 173 health departments from the state, local, and tribal level declared their intent to apply for funding by the January 18, 2012 deadline, and 121 ultimately submitted a proposal, due January 31, 2012.
Purpose: The contest, which is sponsored by APHA with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Public Health Improvement Initiative (NPHII), was initiated to advance state, territorial, local, and tribal health departments’ development of innovative public health policy strategies, in particular those that aim to eliminate health inequities. The contest also aims to strengthen health departments’ capacity to use policy approaches and their ability to work across public health programs and engage diverse community partners in the policy process.
In addition to strengthening health departments’ capacity to use policy approaches, another intended outcome of the contest is to identify emerging and promising practices that can be replicated in other communities. APHA plans to highlight the work of awardees and strong applicants by sharing information about their activities through various APHA communication channels, and by developing resources, such as case studies, for health departments interested in adopting a similar approach. APHA also plans to coordinate a session at the APHA Annual Meeting for awardees to present lessons learned and success stories from their policy work.
Award Process: Review panels are being conducted the weeks of February 6 and February 17, 2012. Reviewers represent a variety of public health and public health policy professions and were recruited primarily through APHA and CDC contacts. The role of reviewers is to review, evaluate, and score approximately six proposals and participate in a review panel meeting by phone. Reviewers will evaluate and score the proposals based on the strength and clarity of the work plan and evaluation plan; the capacity of applicants to carry out the proposed activities; the strength of applicants’ partnerships; the degree to which the proposed solution will have an impact, serve as a model for other jurisdictions, and be sustainable; the degree to which the project will build sustainable capacity for future policy work; and the innovativeness of the proposed solution.
Once the review panels have concluded, APHA will review the scores and recommendations of reviewers in order to make final funding decisions. Funding decisions will take into account APHA needs to ensure geographic and organizational diversity of funded projects (e.g., across the range of types of health departments). APHA hopes to notify awardees by the end of February 2012 and awardees will have until December 31, 2012 to use the funding.
Monitoring: APHA will closely monitor awardees to ensure that the objectives of the contest are achieved. Awardees will be required to submit a progress report half-way through the funding period outlining barriers encountered, strategies for overcoming barriers, and technical assistance needed; and a final report at the end of the funding period. APHA will also hold a kick-off call with awardees to ensure that the goals of the project are clearly articulated, as well as, two group check-in calls.