How Resilience Institute helped Wyoming Dept. of Health get through COVID-19.

Pre-intervention

For the Wyoming Department of Health’s public health division, the demands of the 2020 pandemic response were relentless. Part of the workforce was in active response on what felt like a 24/7 basis, and people were openly struggling — sharing experiences of depression and anxiety as leadership asked them to give more of themselves while the world around them remained uncertain and frightening. Leadership recognized they needed to offer their teams tools to navigate this, but lacked a structured way to assess where staff actually stood or to respond at scale.

Intervention

• Partnered with the Resilience Institute, beginning with the Leadership Council to model the work from the top
• Deployed the Resilience Assessment to give leadership a clear, data-rich picture of the real impact COVID-19 was having on staff
• Established bi-weekly resilience circles — small groups across the division meeting every other week to discuss webinar learnings and apply them to daily work
• Embedded resilience practice into the division’s operating rhythm so it became part of how teams worked together, not a one-off training

Post-intervention

• Teams report growing together, with processes becoming visibly more resilient over time
• Staff developed capacity to lead from strength rather than only managing weakness
• Cultural shift toward expecting change, facing it directly, and dealing with it one day at a time