Multnomah County Health Department (MCHD) is the designated local public health authority for Multnomah County. Multnomah County, located in the northwest corner of Oregon, is home to the state's largest and fourth largest cities (Portland and Gresham, respectively). Despite being the smallest in square miles, Multnomah is the state's most populous county (811,880 residents). The population is 7% African / African American,9% Asian, 11% Latino, 3% Native American / Alaskan Native, 1% Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander, and 71% White non-Latino. As the social and economic hub of Oregon, Multnomah County works closely with neighboring counties in the Portland metro area, providing services for a population of over 1.8 million people. More information about MCHD can be found at https://multco.us/health.
MCHD operations are guided by core values of honoring individual and community-level approaches to health and well-being, building strong organizational partnerships across the community, addressing the underlying social inequities that determine good health, and emphasizing prevention and early intervention. Organizational goals seek to assure that individuals, families, and communities gain greater control of the factors that influence their health, and that the department continually adapts to the population in order to serve as an effective and accountable local public health authority and provider of community health services.
MCHD is the State's largest local health department, with approximately 1,600 employees. The department is made up of eight (8) divisions, including the Public Health Division, Mental Health & Addictions Services, Corrections Health and Integrated Clinical Services.
The Public Health Division is made up of approximately 300 employees. Workforce development is a critical public health issue and priority for the division, largely due to an aging workforce who will be retiring over the next 5 10 years. It was important to develop a process to intentionally identify, develop, train and retain individuals for future management and leadership roles in order to create a well-rounded pool of candidates for promotional considerations and succession planning.
For this reason, we proposed to develop Public Health Career Maps with the objective of educating staff, interns and students on the various career paths in public health. The goal of this project was to develop a toolkit for supervisors to explain the opportunities for professional growth available to employees in a specific classification. In addition, career maps could also be used to show basic education and skills required for various paths in public health for students interested in pursuing healthcare careers.
While there is a general relationship between time and opportunities, there is no direct, one for one relationship between any particular job, training, education level, or opportunity and the career path highlighted in the career maps. Supervisors can use the maps any time an employee has questions about career paths or opportunities. While the maps are not exhaustive or completely comprehensive, they provide an opportunity for employees and supervisors to talk about the many professional opportunities available in each classification, to illustrate where employees are at in their career progression, and discuss long-term goals and actions that might be helpful in achieving professional growth.
The Public Health Career Maps took about two (2) years to develop. The project was broken up into different phases. For Phase 1, we looked at job classifications that were part of a series (e.g., Office Assistant 1, 2 and Senior; Program Technician, Specialist and Specialist Senior, etc.). Once the Phase 1 career maps were created, we developed career maps for classifications that were not part of a series nor had any visual career trajectory (i.e. Health Educator, Nutrition Assistant, etc.). As a result, we created thirty (30) Public Health Career Maps by the time the project was completed. We presented our report during a Public Health Managers / Supervisors meeting in August 2019, which was our kick off to implementation.
We feel that the implementation of the career maps was successful in meeting the project's objectives. Managers / supervisors are using the maps with their staff during annual reviews, and staff are taking charge of their own professional development by using the career maps to take an active approach to positioning themselves for career advancement. The impact of the career maps enhances the division's succession planning efforts to have the right people with the right skills at the right time”. Ultimately, success cannot happen without managers, supervisors and senior leadership participation, influence and support.