CHSD Online

For over a decade, the Georgia Health Policy Center’s Community Health Systems Development team (CHSD) has provided technical assistance to rural communities and healthcare organizations – first across Georgia, and then expanding in 2002 to include the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy’s (ORHP) Rural Health Outreach, Network Planning, Network Development, and Delta States grantees throughout the country. Under contract to ORHP, we currently serve over 200 grantees.

It is our goal as technical assistance consultants to build strong relationships with our grantees.  We are here as a support for you and your partners as you plan and implement your project.

The technical assistance services that we offer vary according to the needs of each grantee.  Generally, we schedule a regular monthly phone call and communicate in between those calls by email or phone as needed. Grantees and technical assistance consultants work together to schedule and plan an initial site visit during the first project year. In the second year, grantees may attend a Peer Learning Seminar held in Atlanta, or may plan a second site visit with their technical assistance consultant. Grantees also have access to quarterly webinars offered by GHPC to all ORHP grantees.
Some ways that your technical assistance consultant can support your project include:

• Connecting you with other grantees/communities
• Researching and sharing “models that work”
• Strategic planning
• Board development
• Evidenced-based practices for community outreach
• Sustainability planning
• Evaluation support (designing needs assessments, developing logic models, finding evidence to support selected output and outcome measures, etc.)

No one technical assistance consultant is an expert in all areas of rural health work -- but we have a wealth of knowledge and experience on our technical assistance team to draw on. We also have relationships with more than 200 other rural communities implementing a wide array of programs that we can connect you to.

We hope that you’ll take advantage of as many of the technical assistance offerings and opportunities as might be useful to you. One goal that you, your ORHP project officer and the CHSD team all share is the success and sustainability of your program!

Beverly Tyler, Director
Community Health Systems Development
Georgia Health Policy Center