Collaborations with local health departments – 11/15/11

Q: How has your tobacco control program encouraged county/district health departments to incorporate tobacco control efforts into their existing work, particularly in situations in which the local health departments are receiving little or no funding from the state/territory tobacco control program? What strategies have been most effective in your state for engaging local health departments? For example, one easy win could be working with healthcare providers to increase referrals to the quitline from their communities; however, Vermont is looking for all types of ideas for working with local health departments, whether or not they relate to tobacco cessation.

Any resources or sample materials you’ve used in your outreach/communications to engage local health departments would be helpful as well.

A:

1. Kentucky: When the Master Settlement Agreement was signed, our Commissioner agreed that funds would go to all local health departments to address the four CDC goals and each health unit (individual or district) would maintain at least a .5 FTE in each local health department and 1 FTE in district health departments. Each year we give them guidance (see example), and they write a plan and budget that is approved by our office.
    
2. Nebraska: Here are a couple examples of how we’ve worked with local health departments.  Please note though that in the majority of these examples, some funding was provided.
    
   Three rural health departments have staff working on spit tobacco issues in their area.  Two of the departments are located in communities with rodeos including the Burwell Rodeo, NE largest and nationally recognized rodeo.  With small annual grants of $3,000 to $5,000 these departments have worked to eliminate spit tobacco company sponsorship, and presence at rodeos, county fairs and other events.
    
   A couple local health departments, with funding from the NE Healthy Communities program, have received grant dollars to work on tobacco free school campus policies – the tobacco policy work has been incorporated into the local health department efforts geared at overall comprehensive school health and healthy school environments.
    
   Most of the local health departments in the state were instrumental in helping educate business after the NE Clean Indoor Air Act passed – grants were available for LHD’s to apply for in the 10,000 - $15,000 range.  Departments were invested in getting businesses educated about the law as they knew they would be on the front line handling the implementation of the law, investigating complaints, etc.  Our experience with the health department demonstrated their effectiveness and interest in secondhand smoke issues and currently 10  out of 24 of the local health departments in our state have ARRA funding from us to increase the number  of voluntary policies  for smoke-free multi-unit housing and smoke-free Housing Authority housing.  The funding range for these grants is between $8,000-$18,000.
    
   A tool that might be helpful include the website we have related to smoke-free housing: http://smokefree.ne.gov/housing/

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Other Response:

1. National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO): In early 2010, NACCHO, NALBOH, and the TCN collaborated on a survey of local health departments and boards of health to learn more about ways state and local health departments (LHDs) are collaborating, and to identify practical ways in which they can work more closely. The most common ways in which state tobacco programs are already working with local health departments (as reported by LHDs):
    
   • Quitline implementation
   • Sharing resources at no charge
   • Providing general tobacco funding
      
   Refer to the Program Funding Guidelines document from NACCHO for more details on programming and funding allocation, and please click here for tips on getting started with collaboration, “easy wins” for states, and examples of how local health departments have successfully used the Guidelines in their work with the state.

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