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Capella University

NURS-FPX8020 Doctoral Executive Leadership in Contemporary Nursing

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Strategic Plan Development

Strategic planning is essential for health care organizations to set the framework for allocating resources, improving patient outcomes, and responding effectively. The voice of front-line staff in health care organizations is also crucial during the strategic planning process because they are directly engaged in the community, have operational knowledge and experience in programmer implementation and the uptake of evidence-based programmers. Such experience and dedication towards patients ensures that the strategic objectives of health care organizations are true to the actual health care delivery and reflect the actual health care needs of the population that has been neglected (Laari & Duma, 2023). To achieve the highest possible impact for the organization and for population health outcomes in the long term, it is helpful to involve frontline staff in a comprehensive strategic planning process. The purpose of the assessment is to develop a strategic plan for the Department of Population Health (DPH) at NYU Lang one Hospital, through the Balanced Scorecard approach.

Departmental Strategic Priorities

The ability of an organization to provide sustainable, equitable health care is the most important strategic priority. The Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Hospitals, since 2013, has been the architect of the Community Service Plan. Thus, ongoing funding is a key financial priority to support more than 40,000 people a year at NYU Langone Hospitals (NYU Lang one Health, 2025). DPH has a solid federal reimbursement policy in place and is consistent with New York State Prevention Agenda funding policies. Operating sustainable finances for DPH will enable community programs to continue to serve and will enable DPH to adapt to the evolving population health needs.

An important thing a Healthcare Department can do is to enhance the health status of vulnerable groups. There are disparities among communities that are experiencing the same situation, but some communities are worse off or worse than others. Areas such as Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Hempstead have a higher number of underprivileged people due to a lack of prenatal Care and Early Childhood Development programs available (NYU Langone Health, 2025). If parents retain 90% of the information and their knowledge increases 85% over two years, it will show that these programs are viable projects (NYU Langone Health, 2025). DPH is working to show a commitment to health disparities by improving health outcomes for underserved populations in the area of maternal and child health.

Better patient safety outcomes and reducing unnecessary patient harm can be achieved by the improvement of internal clinical processes. Fall Prevention and Exercise for the Elderly (E4E) is one of the eight major internal processes initiatives identified by the NYU Langone Hospitals’ DPH Program to improve clinical practice and includes an 8-week provider-led intervention spread across Brooklyn and Long Island (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The fall prevention and exercise for seniors program falls under the highest priority of an intervention, as falls contribute to more emergency room visits and increased healthcare costs in all the communities served by DPH (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The program is considered a quality improvement project, allowing it to be undertaken as scheduled since it has a clear structure of interventions and is aimed at reducing the rate of falls by 35-40% among those who participate in the project (NYU Langone Health, 2025). By enhancing the process inside the DPH, the overall culture of safety for patients and families at DPH has also been improved.

One of the key objectives of DPH is to make long-term investments in workforce development. The goal will help DPH grow in providing care that is responsive to community needs. One way that DPH is going to achieve the goal is through the Community Health Worker (CHW) Research and Resource Center, which will increase the capacity of the frontline workforce in Sunset Park, Red Hook, Uniondale, Roosevelt, and Mastic Beach (NYU Langone Health, 2025). CHWs fill the gap between the population and DPH’s clinical programs, ensuring that the population has access to prevention and intervention services, which narrows the Health Disparity gap. The initiative is feasible, as the DPH already has existing training programs, as well as evidence of how many people have been served in the Reach and Impact Report from September 2023 to August 2024 (NYU Langone Health, 2025). DPH will continue to develop a competent and culturally competent workforce to meet the evolving health needs of the community through 2027.

Effects of Organizational Policies

Departmental strategic priorities are greatly affected by the policies of an organization, which can either enable or limit the execution. The Financial Assistance Policy at DPH, NYU Langone hospitals, for instance, is designed to increase access to under-resourced communities all over Brooklyn and Long Island by offering sliding-scale care and assisting with Medicaid enrollment (NYU Langone Health, 2025). NYULH’s focus on health equity and priorities in New York State Prevention Agenda shapes the policy landscape for DPH’s community-based services (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The policies create an enabling environment (policy alignment) that can help to scale up the departmental goals and serve as infrastructure for the sustained implementation of DPH programs in the long term.

However, a number of organizational limitations may hinder the DPH’s strategic goals. Evidence of data gaps in the extended service areas of Uniondale, Roosevelt, and Mastic Beach suggests that there are policy-level challenges to collecting data and, as a result, limits to the ability to create interventions that are solely based on evidence (NYU Langone Health, 2025). Further, DPH has not yet established a consistent standard for data sharing agreements with all community partners, which reduces its capacity to analyze data and to offer a consistent measure of the impact of the program (NYU Langone Health, 2025). Continuing to address policy-level barriers with data governance changes and further community engagement through increased protocols will further support DPH’s implementation of its strategic goals.

Alignment of Departmental Strategic Priorities

It helps to make sure that the priorities in the department’s strategic plan are consistent with the priorities in the institution’s strategic plan. The four strategic priorities of the Department of Population Health are aligned with the entire mission of NYU Langone Hospitals to care, teach, and discover, and support the NYU Langone’s goal of working towards health equity in underserved communities. Sustaining funding for FQHC is a top priority for the organization, which serves more than 40,000 individuals each year from its nine primary care centers in Brooklyn (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The plan focuses on PlayReadVIP, Parent Child+, and Greenlight as the core population health strategies, while the customer priority is focused on improving maternal and child health outcomes. The Fall Prevention priority of the internal processes directly impacts NYU Langone Health’s operational goal to minimize preventable harm in service areas throughout Brooklyn and Long Island (NYULH, 2025). Community health worker development is also part of the overall workforce capacity goals outlined in the Reach and Impact report for the community health worker learning and growth priority (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The graphic representation of the alignments is included in Appendix A, and it shows the direct links between DPH’s departmental priorities and NYU’s organizational strategic framework in each of the four domains of a balanced scorecard.

Department Balance Score Card

In a balanced scorecard framework, organizations select a set of metrics to measure performance in four categories: financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. NYU Langone Hospitals’ DPH has a full scorecard that is connected to its community health mission; it serves more than 40,000 people per year via its Federally Qualified Health Center network and nine primary care centers in Brooklyn within the financial domain (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The customer domain is the backbone of Parent Child+, retaining 90% of families and increasing parental knowledge by 85% in underserved Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Hempstead communities. The Fall Prevention program, a provider-led intervention that aims for a 35-40% reduction in fall rates over eight weeks, helps to strengthen internal processes and is used in all areas of Brooklyn and Long Island and is available virtually at NYU Langone Health (2025). The learning and growth domain is advanced through the Community Health Worker Research and Resource Center and systematic efforts to identify gaps in data along the newly expanded service areas, such as Uniondale, Roosevelt, and Mastic Beach (NYU Langone Health, 2025). A well-designed and well-maintained balanced scorecard can help the DPH ensure that its operations are focused on achieving community health goals, meeting the needs of a diverse population, and improving the equity of health outcomes in the community by 2027.

Formal and Informal Lines of Power

Examining the formal and informal relationships of power is a key aspect in moving forward with decision-making processes and prioritizing in any healthcare organization. The NYU Langone Health (2025) strategic plans are implemented through the Board of Trustees, with formal authority given to the Board of Trustees Audit and Compliance Committee. The Department of Population Health also has formal authority, as the organization is the originator of the CHNAA and CSP since 2013, with the ability to exercise expert power. As such, the Department has shaped data-driven community health priority decisions (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The community health workforce and frontline staff use informal authority by being trusted liaisons between the organization and underserved populations in the neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Long Island (NYU Langone Health, 2025). There are also community partners such as advocacy groups who have informal authority in the organization’s prioritization process. Formal and informal structures of authority and power should be understood to be able to advance strategic priorities effectively and equitably within the department.

The power structures have a negative effect on the organizational culture, policy, and communication of healthcare institutions. Ethical leadership is critical to the sustainability of an organization’s culture and is the foundation for its employees’ engagement and innovative ideas (Tabaghdehi et al., 2026). The cultural aspect of the organization has a significant effect on the way they do business, such as power distance, individualism versus collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance (Mikail et al., 2025). The NYU Langone Hospitals’ Board of Trustees Audit and Compliance Committee sets a formal authority structure for ethical governance of the organization that establishes a framework to ensure that the strategic direction of the organization is accountable, transparent, and has integrity and that leadership at all levels of the organization is ethical (NYU Langone Health, 2025). Leaders’ authority within the organisation is used in a manner that promotes equity, inclusivity, and safeguarding of those most vulnerable (Malik et al, 2022). The DPH applies its expertise to help the community as a whole by applying the highest quality evidence to address local health issues. In doing so, decisions impacting the most underserved populations in Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Hempstead are based on data rather than on any institutional convenience (NYU Langone Health, 2025). The practice of informal power by community health workers and advocacy partners continues to help embed a culture of ethical inclusion, adding to the voices of marginalized communities in the decision-making processes of organizations (Katzen et al., 2024). Clear and fair power relationships build a culture of trust, cooperation, and shared responsibility throughout the organization and enhance community health and policy development.

Conclusion

NYULH has adopted a strategic plan for the Department of Population Health (DPH) which establishes a coordinated and strategic approach to work towards Health Equity. The DPH strategic plan has four key areas: financial sustainability, maternal and child health, fall prevention, and workforce development, and has been developed in a balanced scorecard manner. The strategic plan is strategically linked to the overall goals of NYULH by having effective governance and ethical leadership. A successful and well-designed departmental strategic plan also contributes to accountability in an organization, resource equity, and program responsiveness to the constantly evolving health needs of the target population.