Roadmap to Develop Sharing Initiatives in Public Health

Resource Summary

The Roadmap to Develop Sharing Initiatives in Public Health helps guide public health departments through the process of considering or establishing sharing arrangements across boundaries.

There are three distinct phases on the Roadmap:

  • Phase One: Explore: This phase focuses on why you should consider a sharing arrangement and what type of arrangement to pursue. You can think of Phase One as a “conceptual feasibility” exploration.
  • Phase Two: Prepare and Plan: During this phase, you’ll examine whether and how the issues addressed and agreed to in Phase One can be implemented, resulting in an implementation plan that will meet your identified goals. You can think of Phase Two as “operational feasibility” planning.
  • Phase Three: Implement, Monitor and Improve: During this phase, you’ll focus on ensuring implementation meets the overall plan and goals for the sharing arrangement and for the individual and participating organizations.

Within each phase, the Roadmap addresses a broad range of topics and poses specific questions to discuss and answer. The Roadmap also offers examples of possible actions to address the issues raised during the discussion and provides links to selected tools and resources to further facilitate the work.

During each phase, you will be presented with a series of questions. Try to answer each question as best as you can. While you should go through the three phases chronologically, you need not address the questions within each phase in the order they are listed.

Partners should discuss all questions among themselves as they begin each phase. Moreover, if it becomes apparent at any point that some key issues from an earlier phase were overlooked or not sufficiently addressed, it’s important to go back and resolve them before moving forward.

Keep in mind, the Roadmap is intended to be more of a guide than a set of specific directions for those working on or considering sharing arrangements for their jurisdictions. This publication is from the Center for Sharing Public Health Services. Publication number PHSharing/19-10-V4.

Related Resource:

A Roadmap to Develop Sharing Initiatives in Public Health: Expedited Version

This document is a variation of the full Roadmap, which allows users to do a fast assessment of sharing arrangements. This expedited version should only be used under certain circumstances, such as during an emergency situation. It is always preferable to use the full Roadmap when time and circumstances permit.