Maintaining Program Momentum: Anthc Sustainability Plan

Running head: ANTHC SUSTAINABILITY PLAN1
Alaskan Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC): A Sustainability Plan
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ANTHC SUSTAINABILITY PLAN

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Alaskan Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC): A Sustainability Plan I. Situational Analysis
Community-wise, ANTHC is well-positioned to cater to Alaskan Native American patient needs. Given the organization's longstanding community service, past achievements, and engagement efforts, ANTHC enjoys a sterling reputation among the Alaskan Native American community at large. From a competency and capacity-building perspective, such community-wise engagement is a valuable asset: reproducible for new joiners and shareable among outside stakeholders. The community home of ANTHC, in Alaska, is, moreover, a strong additional asset enabling ANTHC to engage community members closely and, if the need arises, on a one-on-one basis. In short, ANTHC is a community-centered organization par excellence given the organization's track record as well as ongoing community engagement efforts.
On the flip side, ANTHC has identified gaps in organizational structure, funding, and stakeholder engagement areas. For organizational structure, ANTHC experiences a chronic shortage of high-skilled and extensively-experienced physicians who, owing to lack of funds and cultural stereotypes, avoid placements in Alaskan Native American community areas. For funding, a combination of federal bias, state indifference, lack of awareness, and gaps in donor engagement strategies, ANTHC experiences a chronic funding shortage, making sustaining ongoing initiatives, not to mention creating new ones, highly unlikely. For stakeholder engagement, ANTHC exhibits (unforgivable) gaps in donor engagement, social marketing efforts (beyond Alaska), and, not least, a more sustainable vision for current programs and initiatives should include current stakeholders, including individual donors, opt-out for organizational and/or personal reasons.
ANTHC SUSTAINABILITY PLAN

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II. Criteria to Determine Program Value-Added Benefits
Critical to more sustainability at ANTHC is an establishment of well-defined criteria for value-added benefits. Given the current situation, and against a diversity of adverse factors and challenges, ANTHC could have as basic criteria to establish an overall sustainability strategy:
Ї Ensuring a steady stream of funds to maintain current programs and initiatives and to provide momentum for future possible changes or expansions for current efforts.
Ї Enhancing capacity building organization-wide by investing in human capital, particularly in identified core competencies such as intercultural competency and evidence-based medical practice.
Ї Engaging external and internal stakeholders proactively and consistently in order to ensure an establishment of a solid coalition capable of enhancing internal capacities and engaging external expertise.
Ї Investing in social marketing campaigns in and beyond Alaska by, for instan...