Strategic Plan

The Strategic Plan 2018 helps identify and guide the department’s goals and priorities. This most recent plan continues to build on the work of the first Strategic Plan, which was created in 1999. Click the image below to view an accessible PDF or scroll down to read the plan. For a look at previous Strategic Plans, follow the links on the right.

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Strategic Plan 2018

Achieving our Mission

Strengthening the foundation to get things done by using the department’s Operating Principles Opens a New Window.  to guide decision-making.

Measure what matters

• Use data to define problems and consider solutions
• Measure success of interventions using data
• Share data with staff, community and partners.

Maximize funding

• As effective stewards of public funds, maximize impact through efficient, cost-effective programs and services
• Leverage partnerships to maximize community benefit.

Use the right tools the right way

• Align tools, processes and policy to the mission and vision
• Draft procedures that are meaningful to the user
• Streamline processes to help us meet our mandates
• Involve the people closest to the work.

Focusing on Prevention

Promoting equitable opportunities for health and wellness in communities through prevention and early intervention. 

Use data to inform decision-making

• Use population health data to identify and understand leading health concerns
• Examine disparities in health data to effectively prioritize and target strategies to promote health equity
• Compile and share data through a regular Community Health Assessment.

Adopt a collective impact approach

•  Work with partners to develop a mutual action plan to improve community health, implement and monitor progress.

Move strategies upstream

• Work to reduce the need for crisis services
• Prioritize prevention and early intervention strategies that build resilience for children
• Support solutions to the root causes of poor health
• Work in partnership to identify and implement strategies from all bands of the Spectrum of Prevention Opens a New Window. , including:
  1. Strengthening individual knowledge and skills 
  2. Promoting community education
  3. Educating providers
  4. Fostering coalitions and networks
  5. Changing organizational practices
  6. Influencing policy and legislation.
• Collective Impact brings people together in a structured way to achieve social change. Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments and health care.

People Helping People

Providing accessible, culturally responsive services to all regions of the county.

Improve service delivery

• Seek opportunities for innovation to increase the effectiveness of poverty-reducing programs that promote self-sufficiency and recovery
• Develop trauma-informed programs and staff to effectively address adverse childhood experiences
• Continue commitment to the use of evidence-based practices.

Strengthen relationships with Tribal and other government entities

• Use and model Humboldt Practice Model values in our interactions with others
• Explore the development of working agreements with Tribal governments
• Leverage partnerships and resources to strengthen housing security
• Continue decentralizing services throughout the county, co-locating with partners, to meet community-identified needs in culturally responsive ways.

The Humboldt Practice Model values: honesty, transparency and trust; fairness and equity; and accountability and results.

Supporting a Healthy and Engaged Workforce

Increasing job satisfaction and connection to the mission:

• Develop and utilize leadership at all levels
• Link and support teams across DHHS
• Create opportunities to build a culture of inclusion, teaming, respect, appreciation and recognition
• Support professional development
• Develop leadership skills and capacity of staff
• Improve on-boarding of new employees, so that each individual is aware of their connection and role with each other, the agency and the community
• Develop a system to ensure staff receive ongoing training
• Maintain adequate levels of staffing to enable the work to be done
• Develop specific approaches of succession planning at all levels
• Participate in communitywide efforts to recruit, retain and “grow our own” health professionals
• Explore ways to improve career mobility for employees.

Broaden and deepen communication

• Connect communications to the mission and vision of the organization
• Create feedback loops with staff.

Prioritize workforce wellness

• Explore ways to measure workplace wellness
• Implement practices that promote wellness and a culture of mutual support among staff
• Identify and adopt principles of a trauma-informed agency that addresses secondary trauma of staff.