Avoiding Distractions: How Aims Statements Can Help
By: Stephany Medina
A public health nurse, former English teacher, and a planner walk into a conference room. Their task? Build innovative public health infrastructure. Ah, yes. A nice, easy, clear task.
This was the start of our MDH Infrastructure grant work. So where did we start?! We began by creating an aims statement (sometimes called a problem statement).
Some teams fall apart in their collective work because they are trying to solve the wrong problem – or there are different ideas of what the problem actually is. For example, if we defined the problem as, “There are no communications skills within the public health workforce in Northeast Minnesota, therefore the solution is extensive training”, then we would have obviously and painstakingly missed the mark. There are highly skilled communicators in our Northeast public health workforce, and we’ve had the pleasure of working alongside many of you! So, you can see how if a team makes assumptions about the problem, the solutions generated will be misguided (like extensive training for public health staff who have skills in communication, but limited capacity to dedicate to it). That’s why we created our aims statement.
The aims statement included four parts:
Define the current state (or the “problem”)
Define the perfect world state
Define the difference between these two states
Identify what you plan to do about it
It’s important to share that our team did this in collaboration with public health leaders across our region, and took a data-informed approach by using the 2021 Public Health Workforce Interest and Needs Survey (PH WINS) and the Carlton-Cook-Lake-St. Louis Community Health Board’s (CCLS CHB) 2022 annual report. This report included a qualitative assessment of strengths and barriers to operationalizing the Foundational Public Health Responsibilities (FPHR) in our region. We didn’t want to make assumptions about the current state, or that something happening in one county is the same in another, or that our team could dream up the perfect world state all on our own. Collaboration was key to ensuring we knew where we were as a system and where we wanted to be as a system. This was the guiding light for our work, helping us avoid distractions and focus on what matters most. We used these statements when selecting strategies for our workplan.
We chose to make two statements, one for each of our capabilities of focus, and update them periodically as our vision for the perfect world state evolved. This is a process that can be used for a variety of purposes and settings to help gain clarity as a team.
Wondering how this helped to guide our work? Check out our Infrastructure Team handout to see how we’ve fleshed out activities in-scope and out-of-scope for our grant-funded work.
Click here to keep reading about the Infrastructure Team’s work.