The role of the Chief Health Strategist in community health improvement: a MAPP 2.0 counterproposal

In the past 10 years, several significant national initiatives have released updated strategies and guidelines to improve public health practice specifically as it relates to community health improvement. These initiatives include the 2016 release of Public Health 3.0 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), which defines the concept of the Chief Health Strategist as a leader in the community’s health improvement efforts. In addition, in 2022, the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) released guidance for community health improvement through a revised set of accreditation standards and measures, which included a list of suggested models such as Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) to guide the process. Finally, a revised model, MAPP 2.0, was released in 2023 to provide updates to the National Association of County and City Health Officials’ (NACCHO’s) original framework for community health improvement. Despite the valuable information for a collaborative approach to community health improvement found in the 2022 PHAB accreditation standards and measures and in MAPP 2.0, the role of the Chief Health Strategist from Public Health 3.0 is missing. This article describes the importance of the role of the Chief Health Strategist in community health improvement, emphasizing community trust-building, the ability to galvanize community group participation, and the use of systems thinking and decision-making to create a counterproposal to the guidelines presented in MAPP 2.0.