The Office of Infrastructure and Accreditation was created in June 2025, after the Office of Community Engagement shifted to the Division of Licensure and Accreditation within the South Dakota Department of Health (SD DOH). New efforts focus on public health accreditation, workforce development, quality improvement, and training/education. The Office of Infrastructure and Accreditation and SD DOH as a whole will also continue prioritizing community engagement through the State Health Improvement Plan and Coalition, SD DOH strategic plan, elimination of health disparities and promotion of cultural awareness, and tribal partnerships.
Infrastructure & Accreditation Programming
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.
Achieving better health for all communities through access to essential resources has been identified as a guiding principle for the SD DOH’s Strategic Plan.
Learn about eliminating health disparities & promoting cultural awareness
The SHA and SHIP serve as a strategic planning guide for the SD DOH and the many other statewide partners and stakeholders who share in the vision of Every South Dakotan Healthy and Strong. They represent SD DOH’s commitment to addressing immediate health challenges while laying a strong foundation for long-term wellness and resilience.
TRAIN is a learning management system with hundreds of training partners across the country, including governmental public health agencies, universities, and healthcare organizations who share their training and expertise across the system. Each affiliate is an organization that manages its customized TRAIN website. SD DOH serves as the facilitator for the TRAIN South Dakota platform.
TRAIN SD and supporting resources, including hardware, software, and personnel, are funded through state and federal sources. TRAIN SD is offered to partners and their audiences currently at no cost.
TRAIN SD Instructions
- How to Create a TRAIN Account for Users Outside SD DOH
- Managing Your User Account
- TRAIN Homepage Quick Reference
If you need assistance with your TRAIN account, contact the TRAIN SD Administrator at trainsd@state.sd.us.
The Office of Infrastructure and Accreditation 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 addressing health disparities 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.
- South Dakota Good and Healthy Community Health Needs Assessment and Improvement Planning Toolkit: Supports a community-driven process for improving communities’ health throughout South Dakota. The core process steps provide a broad view of community health needs assessment and health improvement planning actions and will guide your community through the how-to, what-for, here-we-are, and now-what stages of a community health needs assessment.