Management Essentials

Management Essentials, created with generous support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a suite of courses designed to enhance the essential management skills of health department leaders to address today’s complex, real-world issues.

The Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS) 2021 Summary Report identifies the areas of budget and financial management, systems and strategic thinking, and change management as the top areas of training needs nationally across all supervisory levels.

Management Essentials offers four courses to meet these national training needs focusing on successful people management, financial management, change management, and strategic planning. These courses include both virtual instructor-led live-learning and asynchronous eLearning formats. The eLearning courses are always available on demand on NACCHO U. Live instructor-led courses will be promoted when they are offered.

Explores fundamental concepts and techniques of people management, including how to delegate effectively and adopt best practices that drive results. In-depth training combined with interactive activities will take participants through the key principles of motivation, delegation, coaching, communication, performance management, and leadership. NACCHO has trained almost 200 local health department staff in Successful People Management.

"All the concepts re-enforced my knowledge, and I took away some nuggets about motivation, engagement and wellbeing. This is especially important post-COVID." -Successful People Management Participant, May 2023

Key financial management skills will be explored, including how to manage budgets and interpret financial statements, and will share tools to monitor and control spending. This fundamentals course will provide a solid foundation in financial management, types of budgets and business investments, and how to identify and improve your company’s financial situation or performance. In-depth training combined with interactive activities will take participants through the financial accounting principles and processes in creating and reporting their organization’s financial statements. NACCHO has trained over 100 local health department staff in the Fundamentals of Financial Management

100% of Fundamentals of Financial Management survey respondents (Fall 2021) found the course useful for learning financial language and applying real-life examples from other health departments.

The need for effective change management skills is rising to the forefront of public health leadership, and has been identified as a critical knowledge area for a high-performance public workforce. This six-module course introduces key concepts in change management theory and practice and offers tools, resources, and real-world examples that all health departments can use to adapt the process to their needs. The course can be accessed here: https://www.pathlms.com/naccho/courses/24251. For more information on change management, visit NACCHO’s Change Management Webpage.

90% of Change Management participants (2022) found that the course completely met the objectives to identify gaps and activities to sustain change, assess organizational and stakeholder readiness, and develop change management plans.

This seven-module course uses tools, resources, and real-world public health examples to introduce the strategic planning process and its six basic steps, taking into consideration the unique environment of local public health departments. We encourage local health departments that anticipate completing a strategic planning process to enroll in this course, which can be accessed at https://www.pathlms.com/naccho/courses/37126. For more information on strategic planning, visit NACCHO’s Strategic Planning Webpage.

Strategic Planning participants' (2022) average level of knowledge about related concepts increased by 50% when compared to their pre-course scores.

Featured Resource

Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals

This resource provides a consensus set of skills for the broad practice of public health, as defined by the 10 Essential Public Health Services.

Featured Resource

Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals

Public Health Infrastructure

Strategic Planning

This section contains information about strategic planning for local health departments.

Public Health Infrastructure

Strategic Planning

Public Health Infrastructure

Adaptive Leadership

Learn more about NACCHO's adaptive leadership portfolio.

Public Health Infrastructure

Adaptive Leadership

Public Health Infrastructure and Systems

Ashley Edmiston

Director, Workforce Development

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Public Health Infrastructure and Systems

Deya Greer

Lead Analyst for Workforce and Leadership Development

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Public Health Infrastructure and Systems

Bianca Lawrence

Senior Program Analyst, PHIS

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Public Health Infrastructure and Systems

Vicki Lee

Program Analyst, Infrastructure

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Public Health Infrastructure and Systems

Jada Johnson

Programs Analyst, PHIS

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