Native Public Health Resilience Planning

The purpose of this program is to assist applicants to establish goals and performance measures, assess their current management capacity, and determine if developing a Public Health program is practicable. Specifically, programs should assess the availability and feasibility of the 10 Essential Public Health Services (EPHS), described further below.

As part of the IHS mission to raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest level, this program seeks to build on and strengthen community resilience by supporting wider access to the 10 EPHS in Indian Country, a framework designed to offer all people a fair and just opportunity to achieve optimal health and well-being. For more information on the EPHS, please visit https://www.cdc.gov/publichealthgateway/publichealthservices/essentialh…. The framework of the EPHS has served as a guide to the public health field since 1994, and describes the public health activities that all communities should undertake, including, 1) monitor health status to identify and solve community health problems, and 2) Diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community.

The EPHS framework was revised in 2020 with an emphasis on equity and reflects current and future public health practice goals. The EPHS have been included in the HHS Healthy People initiatives since 2010, when the initiative first included a focus area of Public Health Infrastructure with the goal to “ensure that Federal, Tribal, state, and local health agencies have the infrastructure to provide essential public health services effectively.”