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Finding Innovation and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Brief

Finding Innovation and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sector Alignment and the Response to COVID-19

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This brief highlights how the COVID-19 crisis has both underscored and created a host of problems affecting health disparities and health equity that urgently require attention. Successfully addressing the complex challenges that affect community health — such as COVID-19 and its economic impacts — requires health care, public health, and social services to work together in new ways.

Prior to the pandemic, some communities made meaningful progress in building cross-sector alignment between the health care, public health, and social service sectors. But, resource limitations, social distancing, urgent public health responsibilities, and health care system strain threaten progress towards the building of sustainable connections across organizations and sectors at a time when they are needed most.

Aligning Systems for Health, led by the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, believes that collaboratives will be more successful if they move toward cross-sector alignment, which involves building sustainable connections across organizations and sectors. These connection points include developing critical capacity around a shared purpose, governance structure, sustainable financing with incentives and accountability, and shared data and measurement systems. These connections can help public health, health care, and social services together tackle big challenges, like health equity, when combined with external urgency, organizational capacity, and community engagement.

This brief is part of the GHPC’s Innovation & Resilience Series.

Components of Alignment

Data Icon Data
Financing Icon Financing
Governance Icon Governance
Purpose Icon Purpose

Author Organization

Aligning Systems for Health

Publication Date

08.07.2020

Topic Area

Alignment 101
COVID-19
Case Study

Aligning in Action: Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement

This case study examines how the Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement uses a collective impact approach to implement its 28-year strategy to reduce health disparities and create place-based systems change.

Webinar

Bridging Trust and Community in Cross-Sector Alignment

What can individuals and institutions do to build trust as a foundation for creating community connections and engaging citizens? This webinar on December 17 examines why intentionally focusing on trust is critical to maintaining connections, building community, and leveraging success.

Brief

Making Aligning Work Series

This series mines the experience of catalysts, researchers, and funders who have been involved with efforts to align the three sectors—health care, public health, and social services—through quarterly interviews (fall 2019 through spring 2021).

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