How Nebraska’s public health agency breaks down silos across 93 counties

The big picture

• Nebraska’s Division of Public Health manages 400+ employees and partners with 19 local health departments in the nation’s sixteenth largest state, making cross-organizational collaboration difficult despite shared goals. 
• Ashley McCracken’s four-person team oversees strategic planning, workforce development, grant management and institutional knowledge – all requiring seamless collaborations across geographic and organizational boundaries that traditional tools could not bridge. 
• Nebraska DPH deployed Roundtable to create dedicated digital workspaces for cross-organizational teams, including state leadership, local health directors, and initiative-specific groups, with 86% of users in the Preventive Health Services Block Grant workspace reporting full support for the platform. 

Breaking down silos

The Nebraska Division of Public Health (DPH) has over 400 employees and partners with 19 local health departments, spread across the sixteenth largest state in the US. 

‍Ashley McCracken, Program Manager II at Nebraska’s DPH’s Office of Performance Management — like many public servants at state and local agencies across the country — manages a geographically distributed group of people. 

“We are a team of four,” said McCracken. “We manage DPH’s strategic plan, performance management and quality improvement, workforce development and state health improvement plan, planning, tracking and reporting.” McCracken’s team is also responsible for ensuring visibility into priorities, timelines, and key metrics DPH uses to judge efficacy, and in her words “preserve institutional knowledge” for the department. 

Importantly, McCracken’s team coordinates with partners like the National Association of Local Health Directors (NALHD) and the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Office of Public Health Practice (UNMC), among many other community partners. 

‍“We share local and state priorities with UNMC and NALHD, they support our training and research efforts. Our community partners, including local health departments, are critical of ensuring consistent, measurable impact across our public health system,” McCracken explained. 

Every single one of these responsibilities requires effective collaboration.  Without the ability to break down organizational and geographic silos, creating visibility into performance measures or distributing grant information is challenging. 

Priority-based collaboration

Alex Vasa, Administrative Programs Officer II, dove deeper into potential coordination challenges. The Division of Public Health houses over 125 different programs and services. These are different teams in different buildings, in different parts of the state that have the same goals, “just different lanes.” 

Before Roundtable, McCracken explained, they coordinated using “lots of email threads, sometimes people not getting on the right email thread; miscommunication was a big issue.”

Turning to Roundtable helped DPH break down barriers. “We are able to create effective digital spaces for people across organizations who share priorities,” Vasa said. “Roundtable is a single space for everyone to gather and share the knowledge, resources, and information needed to do their best work.” 

Nebraska DPH has deployed workspaces in Roundtable for public servants working on similar initiatives, regardless of organization, including one for personnel dedicated to the state’s health improvement plan, a nutrition-focused group, and a physical activity group. 

Today, Roundtable is receiving rave reviews. Among the Prevention Health Services Block Grant group in Roundtable, 86% of users were “fully supportive” of the platform. 

“Roundtable has been an effective tool in bridging communication gaps with our partners across Nebraska,“ McCracken said. The platform is helping partners and programs connect with each other to have meanignful conversations across organizations.

Collaboration at scale, with Roundtable. Learn more today.