The Importance of Stakeholder Engagement Between the Public and Private Sectors

Engaging and collaborating with public and private sector stakeholders is a cornerstone of public health. Current public health and prevention topics and issues are complex and multi-faceted, and one agency, industry, or sector cannot solve these problems alone.[1] Public health collaborations and partnerships leverage combined resources, expertise, and experience to achieve mutually desired goals that reach beyond the federal agency sector. For the past few years, Cloudburst has worked with several centers and divisions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to expand their stakeholders and engagement strategies within the public and private sectors.

Cloudburst worked with the CDC’s Office of the Associate Director for Policy and the Center’s Office of Health System Collaboration to develop a convening to promote collaboration between public health and health care to align evidence-based preventive practices with value-based payment and delivery models through the 6|18 Initiative. This private convening, which included health plans, subject matter experts, and stakeholders, launched a collaborative engagement among several private health plans partnering with the CDC’s 6|18 Initiative.

Recently, Cloudburst worked with CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention (DHDSP), and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) to develop partnership engagement plans with their internal and external partners and stakeholders. Cloudburst conducted research and data analysis with internal and external stakeholders to develop literature reviews, partnership assessment and recommendations reports, and partnership engagement and action plans which provided in-depth scans of diverse new partners to help achieve current and new priorities, and strategies for targeted new partner outreach.

Currently, Cloudburst is working with CDC’s Division of STD Prevention (DSTDP) to evaluate key clinical strategic partnerships between county/city STD programs with significant STD morbidity and their key clinical partners. Cloudburst is developing several quantitative and qualitative data collection instruments to gather and analyze data from STD state and local grantees. Information from this project will contribute to a better understanding of the current state of publicly funded STD programs, services, partnerships, and the effects of budget cuts on the reduction of services. Additionally, the information collected via the survey will be used to determine the role effective partnerships have on specific STD prevention and control activities.

Partnership engagement plans, new partner outreach strategies, and partnership evaluations can provide agencies with a roadmap to supporting their priorities and achieving their objectives with the support of targeted partners. Through these diverse stakeholder engagement projects, Cloudburst continues to promote the importance of partnerships between the public and private sectors in addressing some of the most pressing public health problems.

Written by Meenoo Mishra, a Senior Analyst in The Cloudburst Group’s Public Health practice area. Ms. Mishra serves as the technical lead on projects with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), such as a clinical partnership evaluation for the Division of STD Prevention and training and technical assistance for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).