Paper: Improving Older Adult Health by Operationalizing State Plans on Aging and Health Improvement
The Journal of Public Health Management and Practice highlights a unique private-state partnership in their new paper, "Improving Older Adult Health by Operationalizing State Plans on Aging and Health Improvement."
Fruitful collaboration between state health departments and sister state agencies on aging can help states achieve healthy aging in their populations. Joint use of departmental resources, networks, and public health expertise can support the implementation of social determinants of health principles into systems-level plans on healthy aging.
Authors Sands et al. evaluated one such partnership between the Georgia Division of Aging Services (DAS) and Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) on their collaboration on a joint action plan based on a systematic crosswalk between agency plans. Leveraging the joint priorities uncovered by the crosswalk, the two agencies expanded their networks in rural health leadership and began the development of data profiles on aging measures.
Findings from the analysis include the following implications for policy and practice:
- Establishing partnerships between governmental public health departments and units on aging is critical to advancing healthy aging now and in the future.
- Conducting a crosswalk to compare and analyze the plans of public health departments and units on aging can help to strategically identify shared priorities and opportunities for collaboration. This process can be replicated and adapted by other jurisdictions at the state and local levels.
- Having a structured process and dedicated time for understanding the results of the crosswalk of public health and aging plans supports operationalizing shared priorities between departments.
- It would be beneficial for public health departments and units on aging to participate in one another’s future plan development processes to proactively increase alignment between their priorities.
JAHF supported this partnership in Georgia and the evaluation conducted by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) through the Age-Friendly Public Health Systems initiative.
Read the paper.
Learn more about JAHF's support of TFAH and Age-Friendly Public Health Systems.