These sessions will focus on the national strategic direction to implement, evaluate, and disseminate evidence-based community preventive health activities in order to reduce chronic disease rates, prevent the development of secondary conditions, address health disparities, and develop a stronger evidence base for effective prevention programming. Sessions will feature the following:

1. Evidence and practice-based community and clinical prevention and wellness strategies on tobacco-free living, active living and healthy eating, and increased use of high impact, quality clinical preventive services that have led to specific, measurable health outcomes to reduce chronic disease rates, particularly related to reduction of health disparities
2. Strategies and materials used with policy makers to highlight the actual or potential return on investment by implementing population-based prevention interventions
3. Use of community –based planning models to identify gaps and assets, gather community input, develop plans and gain participation of community members in the implementation of a plan of action
4. Evaluation methodologies used to monitor activities and achieve process, impact, and long term outcomes

These sessions will focus on how the public health system plans for and reacts to the dynamic elements affecting public health departments and/or the greater public health systems within which they function including how public health is influencing the conditions in which people live, work, play, study, and worship to improve the health of populations through policy, system, environment, and organizational changes. Sessions will feature the following:

1. Creating and implementing policies, through traditional and non-traditional partnerships, that address changing political initiatives and  economic/socioeconomic environments to ultimately affect interventions for community health.  Current and emerging issues may include elements of the socioecological model and social determinants of health to increase active living and healthy eating, increasing immunization rates, decreasing sexually transmitted disease rates and other infectious diseases, reducing adverse childhood events, increasing healthy starts, reducing infant mortality, promoting high impact clinical preventive services, increasing behavioral health, etc.  Policy development can include influencing policies in the private sector, local or state governmental level.
2. Ensuring the voice of public health is at non-traditional tables for policy and systems development (such as economic growth, transportation, land use, etc.)
3. Operating within the public health system to influence evaluation and change in the delivery of community-based public health services to meet current and emerging public health threats and opportunities.
4. Innovative organizational change initiatives to meet the new political and economic environment in which LHDs find themselves.

These sessions will describe effective strategies, methods, and programs that demonstrate the value and contributions of local health departments in an era of limited financial and staffing resources. Sessions will feature the following:

1. Promoting the role of LHDs in improving public health and safety and creating healthy communities.
2. Elevating the profile of LHDs in local communities to various audiences including the media, policy makers, decision makers, the public, and the public health workforce through effective media and communication strategies.
3. Communicating and promoting the responsibilities and roles of LHDs in planning for and implementing health care reform at the local level.
4. Establishing relationships and developing collaborations with new and non-traditional partners who have a stake in improving the health of individuals and communities.

The sessions will showcase training efforts, programs, policies, and stories that are preparing our workforce for the new public health. Sessions will feature the following:

1. Meeting the Domain 8 national accreditation standards and measures for maintaining a competent public health workforce
2. Preparing our workforce for undertaking policy and systems change, health equity and social determinants, and community mobilization and advocacy work.
3. Planning for and preparing our workforce for 21st century communication and health promotion tools and methods that influence population health.
4. Preparing our workforce for supervision, management, and leadership positions and programs that are systematically implementing succession planning and management.

Developing new recruitment, selection, and retention strategies to bring the right people with the right skills to meet the new public health challenges facing our communities.

These sessions will present public health researchers with an opportunity to influence the practice of public health and help public health practitioners to learn from the research experiences of others and to apply what they learn to their own practice. Sessions will feature the following:

1. Research studies in which LHDs played an important role as a research partner.
2. Research studies that have important practice or policy implications for LHDs.
3. Demonstrations of how LHDs have applied research findings in their agencies.
4. Practice-relevant research using NACCHO’s Profile data.

Rapidly declining budgets and an equally declining public health workforce has resulted in local health departments needing to face a sobering fact….having to “do less with less.” These sessions will explore the use of innovative tools, resources, and practical applications that LHDs have implemented to build and sustain public health preparedness and ensure community resilience in the face of overwhelming fiscal and operational challenges.  Sessions will feature the following:

1. Integration of the CDC Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program capabilities in all-hazards disaster planning.
2. Practical approaches to building and sustaining public health and healthcare coalitions to ensure an efficient and effective ESF-8 response to disasters and other emergencies.
3.  Innovative and cost effective ways to train and cross-train the public health workforce in disaster response.
4. Creative approaches to addressing the challenges of distributing and dispensing medical countermeasures in the event of a catastrophic disaster or emerging infectious disease.
5. Understand the changing role of the public health workforce in emergency preparedness through exploring the use of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness program, learning key coalition-building tools, expanding volunteer resources, discussing the use of medical countermeasures, and training the public health workforce within the community to provide adequate for support disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
6. Strategic use of volunteers, such as the Medical Reserve Corps, in public health preparedness planning, response, and recovery.