Partners

Connect with partners. Partnering is a crucial success factor in public health work. Many organizations have a stake in creating health; you need to find out who they are because you share a mission. Your organization should always look to partner instead of compete because resources are scarce. All of the best public health business plans involve partnership. Having partners lets you diversify the effort, creates efficiencies, builds community buy-in, improves sustainability, and creates new opportunities.

A key function of any business plan is to analyze and describe how the partners will work together. Some of your partners may want the clarity and commitment of a business plan—they are used to thinking in business planning terms. Some potential partners are wary of planning efforts that don’t include business plan elements.

Partnering is a key principle of business as well. First, businesses will compete if they must, but they prefer to avoid competing directly. That strategy is called “running to space,” going to a market niche not already occupied by someone else. Second, most businesses are completely reliant on partners. They have broad networks that are essential to them: suppliers, contractors, distributors, lobbyists, trade-journal journalists, and ad agencies.

In the mobile dental van example, the health department partnered with Dare and Hyde County Schools, daycares and pre-schools, dentists who did not see Medicaid patients, school nurses, the Children and Youth Partnership for Dare County, and the Hyde County Partnership for Children.