Center for Health Living and Chronic Disease Prevention at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

The Situation

The Centers for Disease Control selected only four agencies nationwide to be sites for its Chronic Disease Integration Demonstration Project in 2008. The Center for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention (the Center) of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment was one of those four. The Center had been working towards integration as a means to increase its effectiveness and their selection as a demonstration site became a catalyst to increase the pace of those efforts.

The Process

The Center contracted Nonprofit Impact to facilitate the integration planning process. The process began with the Center’s management and leadership team working to create a statement of purpose and shared goals to encompass all Center programs. As the process moved to strategy selection and the building of work plans, Shelli and the team ensured that the entire staff was included in the planning process in a meaningful way.

Shelli then worked to address organizational structure by making specific organizational development recommendations to support successful implementation of the integration plan. According to Andrea Poniers, Deputy Director, “We can talk things to death sometimes and Shelli really kept us moving forward so we knew we were getting somewhere.”

The Results

The Center is entering the second year of the demonstration project. As staff creates work plans for next year, they are focused on identifying strategies that tie more closely to outcomes. Also, the need to make formal structural changes is top of mind. Andrea notes, “Shelli helped us see how all the different pieces of the integration plan are linked and how the right organizational structure is required to really implement the plan successfully.”