Public Health in the Rockies 2026

Purpose and Need. Public health professionals in rural and frontier communities have access to a lot of powerful stories in their community health assessments, program reports, surveillance data, and field observations, but most don't exactly know how to turn those data into a narrative that resonates with community members, school boards, and local media who need to hear it. Data storytelling is a learnable, practical skill, and it is one of the best communication tools available to small, under-resourced health departments trying to demonstrate impact, build trust, and make the case for public health investment. This session teaches the basics: what data storytelling is, why it works, and how to build a story from data you already have.

Content and Best Practices. The session opens with a 20-minute interactive framing block grounded in a five-element data storytelling framework: context, relevance, clarity, connection, and call to action. The presenter will introduce each element using a worked rural public health example that walks participants through the full arc from raw data point to audience-ready story. Content addresses how to find the story in your data, how to frame it for a non-technical local audience, how to pair data with narrative without distorting either, and how to close with a call to action specific enough to act on. Examples draw from real community health work in small, rural jurisdictions.

Hands-On Activity and Share-Out. Following the framing block, participants work in small groups for 20-30 minutes on a rural communication challenge using a fictional rural Colorado county case set — a composite mountain and agricultural community with a seasonal workforce, tourism economy, and wildfire exposure whose profile mirrors other rural and frontier communities across the state. Each group receives a jargon-heavy public health text and a pre-assigned local audience, such as county commissioners, agricultural workers, or rural seniors, and works together to translate the text into a plain-language story using the five-element framework. A full-group share-out follows, with each group presenting their translation and the facilitator drawing out key differences in how the same data story shifts across audiences. This discussion is where the deepest learning happens. Participants leave having heard multiple approaches to the same problem and having reflected on what made each one work for their community.

Relevance to the Conference Theme. Data storytelling is, at its core, a Stronger Together practice: it only works when public health professionals listen carefully enough to their communities to know what a story needs to say, and when they trust their audiences enough to speak plainly.

Instructional Methodology. The session uses adult-learning best practices throughout, including interactive framing with a working example, collaborative small-group skill practice, and structured full-group reflection.

Rural youth face compounding barriers to behavioral health — geographic isolation, limited access to mental health services, under-resourced schools, and systems that too often focus on managing behavior rather than building capacity. The result is young people who cycle through school discipline, diversion, and family crisis programs without ever developing the internal skills to interrupt that pattern.

The Messy in Between (MiB) is an identity-based, skill-building coaching framework developed by Soul Grower Industries specifically for this gap. MiB gives youth a practical, jargon-free structure for recognizing their own thought–feeling–action patterns, clarifying personal values, setting meaningful goals, and developing the internal compass that sustains behavior change after formal intervention ends. It is designed to work across settings — from school-based intervention and community prevention to youth diversion and family engagement — without requiring new programs, additional staff, or significant budget.

MiB has been in active use for over seven years across Colorado's 13th Judicial District, one of the state's largest and most rural judicial districts. School-based implementation through a three-day discipline intervention program — in place with one district partner for five years — has produced practitioner-reported outcomes of 75% no-repeat referral rates among youth who complete the program. Youth Diversion implementation has produced practitioner-reported recidivism rates below 5%. Qualitative feedback from youth participants consistently reflects themes of self-efficacy, hope, and ownership — outcomes that align directly with behavioral health promotion and long-term wellness goals.

Recognizing that rural youth often cannot consistently access in-person services, Soul Grower Industries is actively developing digital delivery tools, including an online coaching curriculum and a mobile app platform designed to extend MiB coaching beyond the walls of any single program. These tools represent a health equity infrastructure investment — bringing identity-based skill-building to youth in frontier communities where geography has historically meant no access at all.

This 1.5-hour session will introduce attendees to the core MiB framework and provide hands-on practice with the thought–feeling–action pattern tool — the same activity youth encounter in the program. Attendees will experience the tool as a participant, then engage in a facilitated small-group debrief focused on adaptation across professional roles, including public health, school health, behavioral health, and community prevention.

Youth behavioral health is a public health issue. When young people lack internal coping skills, goal direction, and self-efficacy, the downstream costs appear across every system — emergency departments, juvenile justice, child welfare, and adult behavioral health. MiB addresses upstream determinants of those outcomes by building skills during the critical adolescent window when intervention has the most impact. The digital expansion of MiB directly addresses health equity by removing geographic access as a barrier to quality behavioral health skill-building for rural youth and families.

Instructional methodology includes experiential activities, facilitated small-group debriefs, whole-group discussions, and brief didactic content. Skill development will be measured through a post-session reflection tool completed before attendees leave.

This presentation introduces a practical evaluation toolkit developed specifically for co-response and alternative response programs. For public health professionals, this toolkit addresses a critical gap: how to measure what actually matters in behavioral health crisis response, moving beyond arrest and incarceration metrics toward outcomes that reflect health, well-being, and recovery.

The toolkit is directly relevant to public health practice in several ways. First, it supports program planning and accountability by helping teams clarify goals and select outcomes aligned with public health values, such as connection to care, reduced emergency department utilization, and improved client well-being. Second, it promotes equity and trauma-informed practice by embedding person-centered principles into data collection, ensuring evaluation methods respect the dignity of individuals in crisis. Third, it strengthens community and funder communication, equipping programs to tell compelling, evidence-based stories that justify investment and sustain operations.

Public health professionals working in crisis services, community mental health, health departments, or emergency preparedness will find this toolkit applicable across settings and program models. As co-response programs continue to expand nationally, standardized, impact-driven evaluation frameworks will be essential for building the evidence base, informing policy, and ensuring these models deliver on their promise to improve population health outcomes — particularly for those most vulnerable to behavioral health crises.

The 988 Colorado Mental Health Line provides individuals experiencing emotional, mental health, or substance use concerns with 24/7 access to trained crisis specialists through call, text, and chat services. As Colorado continues to strengthen statewide behavioral health infrastructure, understanding how communities utilize 988 Colorado services and how the system can support broader public health efforts is increasingly important. The Evaluation Center (TEC) at the University of Colorado Denver partners with the 988 Colorado team to provide evaluation and data analytic support related to service utilization and outcomes.

This session will include three components. First, representatives from 988 Colorado will provide an overview of the service model, available supports, and the role of 988 within Colorado’s behavioral health response system. Second, TEC staff will present utilization data and evaluation findings, including trends in call, text, and chat volume over time; common reasons individuals contact 988; and regional differences in service utilization across Colorado. Findings will highlight patterns relevant to public health and behavioral health professionals working in diverse communities throughout the state.

The final portion of the session will focus on facilitated audience discussion and interactive engagement. Participants will be invited to reflect on how utilization patterns align with their professional experiences, discuss perceptions and awareness of 988 within their communities, and identify opportunities for collaboration across public health and behavioral health systems. The additional 30 minutes requested for this session will support meaningful dialogue, peer learning, and discussion of practical strategies for strengthening awareness, access, and coordination related to 988 services in Colorado. Participants will leave with increased awareness of 988 Colorado as a statewide behavioral health resource and with actionable ideas for supporting crisis response and prevention efforts within their own communities.

Background / Purpose: The state of Colorado continues to see variation in cesarean birth rates by facility and persistent disparities in maternal outcomes, highlighting the need for consistent, evidence-based labor support. Trauma-informed care and physiologic birth practices are proven strategies, but they are not reliably integrated into everyday care. The CPCQC Labor Support Workshop was developed to address this gap by building skills, providing state context, and supporting a shared approach to patient-centered labor support across disciplines. This session will highlight how the workshop is being implemented by our SOAR program across Colorado and its role in improving outcomes and advancing equity.

Methods: The workshop brings together nurses, providers, midwives, and doulas for interactive training that combines didactic content with hands-on practice, such as patient positioning and comfort measures. Participants learn practical techniques to support physiologic labor and apply trauma-informed communication. Ongoing evaluation includes participant feedback, self-assessed confidence and skill use, and tracking of primary cesarean rates. Feedback from participants and sites also helps identify barriers and opportunities for implementation.

Results: Participants report increased confidence in providing hands-on labor support and incorporating trauma-informed approaches into care. Hospitals have noted improved communication across teams and more consistent labor support practices at the bedside. Early trends suggest progress toward reducing variation in care and supporting lower cesarean rates, with continued evaluation underway.

Implications: This work demonstrates how a practical, skills-based training can support systems-level change in maternity care. Public health professionals can use similar approaches to scale evidence-based practices, strengthen the workforce, and advance equitable, respectful care. Participants will leave with concrete ideas to implement and sustain trauma-informed labor support in their own settings.

Men’s mental health is a growing public health concern marked by rising rates of suicide, substance use, and what are often described as “deaths of despair.” Despite these trends, men remain significantly less likely to seek help or engage in traditional health services. Compounding this challenge is the lack of coordinated public health infrastructure: there is currently no federal Office of Men’s Health, and only a small number of states have established dedicated offices addressing men’s health needs. This absence reinforces a broader gap in prevention, outreach, and intervention efforts for men.

This presentation draws on the development and implementation of MSU Denver’s Men’s Health academic program—the first of its kind in the region—including courses such as Men’s Health, Men Across Cultures, Fathers and Health, Anger in Men, and Aging Warriors. Evidence from these programs suggests that when men are effectively engaged, benefits extend beyond individuals to positively impact women, children, families, and broader community health outcomes.

The session explores the often hidden landscape of men’s mental health, including patterns of disengagement, identity struggle, and coping strategies such as excessive gaming, pornography use, and substance reliance. These behaviors are examined as adaptive responses to unresolved internal challenges and sociocultural pressures rather than simply pathologies.

Participants will engage with a framework that situates men’s mental health within broader contexts of masculinity, cultural expectations, race, aging, and developmental transitions. The presentation argues for expanding male-centered programming and explores the potential role of state Offices of Men’s Health as structural interventions to improve population-level outcomes. Attendees will leave with practical insights for designing initiatives that effectively reach and resonate with diverse populations of men.