The Community Engagement Program was established within the South Dakota Department of Health (SD DOH) in April 2023 to address growing needs in community engagement, partnership development, social drivers of health, priority populations, and cultural competency. Following a reorganization of the Division of Family and Community Health in September 2024, the program transitioned to the Office of Community Engagement (OCE), becoming a key resource across all areas of the Department. OCE is currently engaged in a strategic planning process to define its priorities and clarify its role within the agency. The finalized plan is expected to be released in winter/spring 2025.
Community Engagement Programming
The SD DOH has partnered with the University of Washington’s Center for Communities That Care to bring the Communities That Care (CTC) framework and prevention model to South Dakota. CTC guides communities through a proven five-phase change process rooted in prevention science. This approach promotes healthy youth development, improves outcomes, and reduces problem behaviors.
CTC, a program of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is a coalition-based prevention operating system. It uses a public health approach to address youth problem behaviors such as violence, delinquency, school dropout, and substance abuse. Through strategic consultation, training, and research-based tools, CTC empowers community stakeholders and decision-makers to apply evidence-based strategies targeting their community’s specific needs. For more information, visit The Center for Communities That Care.
SD DOH has funded several communities across the state to implement the CTC framework. These communities work closely with prevention coaches to navigate each phase of the CTC process and advance prevention education. Coaches are based at the Western Prevention Resource Center (Youth and Family Services) in Rapid City and the Northeast Prevention Resource Center in Watertown.
Funded Communities:
- Brookings
- Brown County
- Cheyenne River Reservation/Eagle Butte
- Custer
- Fall River County
- Horizon Health/Crow Creek
- Lakota Youth Development/Rosebud
- Mitchell
- Pierre/Fort Pierre
- Sioux Falls Urban Indian Health
- Wagner
- White River
- Yankton
A Community Health Worker (CHW) is a frontline public health professional who is a trusted member of, or has a deep understanding of, the community they serve. This connection enables CHWs to act as a bridge between health and social services and the community, improving access to services and enhancing the quality and cultural relevance of care.
Nexus SD is a statewide collaboration of health care, human and social service providers sharing information using an integrated technology platform and referral system to coordinate whole-person care.
The Office of Community Engagement holds monthly calls with each of the nine tribes in SD. These calls include representatives from tribal health departments and Indian Health Services (IHS) and provide a platform for meaningful discussions between SD DOH staff and tribal partners. These meetings focus on staffing updates, programmatic and outreach efforts, new data and tracking insights, successes, challenges, available resources, funding opportunities, and upcoming conferences and training.
These regular calls have strengthened relationships between SD DOH and tribal partners, fostering increased collaboration on critical public health efforts, including sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, treatment, and contact tracing; epidemiology and data sharing; and opioid and suicide prevention initiatives.
- Resilience Resource Hub by Rural Opportunity Institute: This hub offers a library of free resources focused on community engagement, systems and design thinking, and resilience in rural communities.
- Community Engagement Toolkit from HUD Exchange: This provides strategies focused on people and a roadmap to address community needs, ideas, and visions for guiding public investments.
- FEMA’s Guide to Supporting Engagement and Resiliency in Rural Communities: This guide discusses outreach and engagement activities, including mitigation planning that addresses the unique needs and considerations of rural communities.
- RURAL.gov Resources: This website provides a range of resources developed exclusively for rural communities, including individual residents, tribes, Native Americans, and Alaska Natives.
- Community Engagement Resources - MRSC: This page highlights a variety of approaches for obtaining public feedback and involving residents in shaping plans and programs.
- Community Engagement Resource Guide - NNLM: This guide includes tools to better engage and meet the needs of specific communities, as well as examples and templates for easy reference while planning, implementing, and evaluating engagement.
- Collective Impact Forum: Collective impact is a network of community members, organizations, and institutions who advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems-level change.
- Community Tool Box: This page is a free, online resource for those working to build healthier communities and bring about social change. It offers thousands of pages of tips and tools for taking action in communities.