Minnesota Infrastructure Fund Innovation Projects: Application and Guidance

It's not a continuation of that specific grant because this is a different funding source with its own specific purpose. These funds are intended for cross-jurisdictional collaboration. Tribes who have completed a capacity assessment in partnership with Red Star International may have identified places where they want to work closer with MDH, a county health department, or another tribal health department. This grant could support piloting those collaborations. 

This grant application does not ask for a specific work plan with the application itself. You don't need to have the details of the model all figured out, but you do have to have a specified goal or idea, a plan for how you want to develop that goal or idea, and the partnerships in place to collaborate with others to test the idea. Your idea needs to be clear enough that you have buy-in from partners and you can sufficiently answer the application questions. A more detailed project plan will be a deliverable of the grant that will be due within a few months from when the agreements are signed. 

The MDH Center for Public Health Practice anticipates that some projects, depending on the area of focus, may intersect with program areas at the Minnesota Department of Health. In the project description, applicants should describe any potential needs from or impacts on, relevant program areas at MDH that they can foresee. Applicants should be aware that these funds cannot be used to support MDH FTEs, and applicants should not include MDH staff as primary partners in the proposed work.

If you foresee potential overlap with MDH program areas, we recommend that you talk to relevant MDH program staff in advance of applying to identify any questions or concerns and to determine the interest and ability of the program area to partner in the work.

If selected for funding, staff and leadership from the Center for Public Health Practice and the Public Health Strategy and Partnership Division will help facilitate any cross-agency support that might be necessary.

Full question: Regarding the RFA’s language on the requirement to ‘Collaborate across jurisdictions,’ with jurisdictions being defined as community health boards or tribes, does this mean that multicounty community health boards would need to collaborate with another community health board to be eligible to apply for the grant? 

Answer: For this cycle of funding, multicounty community health boards may work with counties within their community health board. Multicounty community health boards may also partner with other community health boards and/or Tribes. Potential partners do not need to be your immediate next-door neighbors but can be any community health board or Tribe with whom you share mutual interests or common challenges.

Depending on your community health board's needs and the needs of potential partners, other funding sources may be a better fit for supporting/sustaining the work you started with the initial grant. There may also be opportunities to expand on what you started in partnership with others. There are many ways to work with potential partners so that more than one entity benefits from the work.  

In addition, community health boards might share common interests with some counties that are part of a multi-county community health board, but not every county in that multi-county community health board. Applicants do not necessarily have to partner across all that multi-county community health board's jurisdictions. That is, if your community health board wanted to partner with one or two counties associated with a multi-county community health board near it, but not all of the counties were ready or interested in that partnership, you could move forward with the interested counties and would still meet eligibility requirements.

MDH staff cannot be listed as a primary partner in the proposal. However, an applicant can acknowledge places where their proposed work may interface with MDH activities, such as those of the Office of American Indian Health or Tribal Health Consultant.  

The MDH Office of American Indian and Tribal Health Relations has shared the funding opportunity with Tribes since they are eligible to apply for the grant. However, MDH has not explicitly let them know that local health jurisdictions might be reaching out to partner with them. 

Yes, a jurisdiction can be part of multiple applications. 

No, it does not matter if the jurisdiction is a fiscal host.