Georgia Health Policy Center

Strategic Alignment

Evidence-based, strategic alignment of health policy agendas and investments across institutional boundaries and local, state, and national policy jurisdictions maximizes resources and strengthens outcomes related to state health policy.  Based on this hypothesis, the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) employs an approach to system change, research translation and policy application that is analogous to facilitating a game of three-dimensional chess. 

Imagine any of a broad range of stakeholders simultaneously playing a complex game of chess on three boards - one above the other - representing each of three levels of activity within the health policy arena – local, state, and national.  Players, in this instance, refer to individuals, organizations, or constituencies who influence health and health policy through their visions, agendas, investments, and actions.

To facilitate system change, GHPC translates findings from research in a way that assists players at each level in understanding opportunities for “winning the game” by integrating their own strategic decisions with those of players on the other two levels.  “Checkmate” outcomes occur when there is greater alignment among various parties both within and across the three levels, maximizing return on investments and magnifying the impact on health.

The idea that greater coordination and collaboration among the multitude of players in the health arena is needed is nothing new:

An effective public health system that can assure the nation’s health requires the collaborative efforts of a complex network of people and organizations in the public and private sectors, as well as an alignment of policy and practice of governmental public health agencies at the national, state, and local levels. (Institute of Medicine, 2002)

Despite many efforts at greater collaboration across levels, more are needed (Tilson & Berkowitz, 2006).  Multi-dimensional partnership models that reach across public-private or local-state-federal boundaries, such as “performance partnerships” used by the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPRG, 1999) and the collaborative models promoted by the national Turning Point program (Sabol B, 2002; Hahn, 2005) have succeeded in producing powerful changes to improve health.