The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) distributes funding to state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) health departments through thousands of grants and cooperative agreements each year. Those jurisdictions turn federal resources into real public health outcomes for the communities they serve. In 2024, with a commitment to improving efficiencies, the agency undertook an enterprise-wide effort to measure how recipients experience that process.

A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, “Designing Better Experiences: A Customer-Driven Approach to Improvements Across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Grants Management Lifecycle,” details the custom collaboration between the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI®) and CDC that produced a CDC-specific model of grant recipient satisfaction.

The partnership began with focus groups and interviews with grant recipients across the country to map the full customer journey, from initial application through ongoing monitoring and reporting. That discovery process informed a tailored survey, administered by CFI Group from May 29 to June 28, 2024, that reached 2,032 principal investigators and project directors. A total of 947 responded, a 47% rate that exceeded current norms for customer satisfaction research.

“CDC wanted to understand how grant recipients actually experience the process of working with them, and no one had measured that across the entire agency before,” said Katie Bennett, Director of Customer Intelligence & Engagement at CFI Group. “We started with the recipients themselves, learned what the journey looked like from their side, and built a model around what we heard. These findings give CDC specific, measurable insight into where their systems are working and where they can be strengthened.”

The model identified seven drivers of satisfaction and produced an overall customer satisfaction index score of 70 on a scale of 0 to 100, comparable to the federal government average for the same period. Training and technical assistance scored highest among the seven drivers at 77. The application process scored lowest at 65. Partnership and budget flexibility, both scoring in the low 70s, emerged as the highest-leverage areas for improvement based on their predicted impact on overall satisfaction.

Respondents who had worked with the same CDC project officer for three or more years reported partnership scores eight points higher than those paired with a project officer for less than a year. Roughly one-third of respondents rated the ease of using online monitoring platforms unfavorably, and their monitoring and reporting scores lagged 26 points behind respondents who rated such platforms highly. Platform usability surfaced as one of the most common themes in open-ended responses, with approximately one-quarter of all respondents raising the concern.

Recipients also gave CDC an average score of 79 for their trust in the agency’s commitment to their success, a foundation the agency plans to keep building on.

The study produced six overarching recommendations for improving CDC operations and services related to grants management. These included improving clarity in the application and award process, reducing reporting requirements and management burden, improving and reducing the number of software platforms, reducing staff turnover, increasing consistency of expectations or guidance, and increasing flexibility.

Respondents represented experiences across 12 CDC funding centers and 90 of 119 eligible funding opportunities. CDC has shared results with recipients through webinars and structured feedback loops.

CDC is one of dozens of federal agencies that distribute grants to state and local partners, and the methodology described in the study is designed to be customized across agencies and industries to uncover operational blind spots, prioritize improvements, and strengthen relationships with the people they serve.

No advertising or other promotional use can be made of the data and information in this release without the express prior written consent of ACSI LLC.

About the ACSI

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI®) is a national economic indicator and a leading provider of customer analytics products that help organizations build lasting customer relationships and prove ROI on experience investments. ACSI’s AI-enhanced platform delivers intuitive dashboards and cause-and-effect analytics that pinpoint the quality drivers most predictive of customer allegiance, retention, price tolerance, and financial performance. ACSI data has been shown to correlate strongly with key micro and macroeconomic indicators, including consumer spending, GDP growth, earnings, and stock returns.

Founded in 1994 at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the ACSI measures customer satisfaction with more than 400 companies in over 40 industries, including federal government services, based on approximately 200,000 annual interviews. Learn more at https://www.theacsi.com/.

ACSI and its logo are Registered Marks of American Customer Satisfaction Index LLC.

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