Public Health in the Rockies 2026

APPs (Advanced Practice Providers) provide both clinical care and clinical education to APP learners across numerous health systems in Colorado. APP training pathways have significantly fewer clinical hours than physician training models, therefore creation of high-quality clinical education programs for APP learners is all the more important to ensure ongoing high quality medical care for our patients.

Creation of a Public Health curriculum would aim to optimize the educational value of this limited clinical time through structured, competency-oriented modules that encompass the scope of the Public Health Institute at Denver Health.

The intent of this curriculum is to ensure a comprehensive experience for the learner by ensuring development of foundational skills that can translate into competency and confidence in early career. Additionally, the goal is to attract students passionate about public health and help support their career development, encouraging them to enter the field post-graduation.

In collaboration several clinical experts at the Public Health Institute at Denver Health, we have developed a curriculum including clinical modules, competencies and resources. Additionally, we developed pre/post surveys for learners and Public Health Practitioners to evaluate the impact of this intervention.

The following will be measured via before and after intervention:

·APP learner experience

·APP learner confidence

·Public Health Practitioner willingness to host learners

·Public Health Practitioner perception of learner preparedness

This is an area of novel development. Research suggests longitudinal programs for medical students are successful in creating providers that outperform counterparts in clinical skills and knowledge. This is an unstudied area for APP learners. Yet, we hypothesize that a framework for longitudinal curriculum for APPs could also yield the similar outcomes while attracting and retaining highly competent and confident Early Career APPs in Public Health.

Our hope is that this curriculum will provide a transferrable framework for any institution to use.

Regional networks can leverage the strengths of diverse organizations to address behavioral health service shortages. This presentation will overview a year-long translatable process for building and sustaining such networks, including a case example in which this approach was sequentially implemented across three different rural regions of Colorado to address nicotine use.

The Regional Networks for Comprehensive Tobacco Treatment (RNCTT) leveraged the Performance Partnership Model (PPM) to engage leaders from different communities in directed, collaborative goal setting. The RNCTT focused on pursuing what communities can accomplish innovatively and rapidly, using their existing infrastructure and no additional funding. Each year, the RNCTT convened a new regional network in a rural part of Colorado which included public health organizations, health care providers, hospitals, community-based organizations, school districts, and more. Networks collectively identified goals to address nicotine use at the regional level, while also pursuing supportive organizational-level goals.

Each regional network was launched by an in-person Action Forum. During this event, didactic, regional information related to nicotine was relayed. Project facilitators led the organizations in network building and goal setting activities. Throughout the project year, organizations met regularly to share updates, successes, and challenges. They also received tailored technical assistance that supported goal achievement and free access to evidence-based trainings designed to increase knowledge and capacity to treat nicotine use. Each project year culminated in an in-person Sustainability Meeting at which project facilitators supported the creation of a sustainability plan to guide future progress and strategically relinquished leadership to the network itself. The RNCTT project empowered three rural regions in Colorado to develop new regional connections and enhanced their capacity to address nicotine use. Thus, the RNCTT project demonstrates the potential for diverse organizations in a region to convene and collaborate to leverage their respective specialties to collectively address public health concerns.

* Background/Purpose: What happens when public health thinks like a business partnership? Faced with low referral volume into the Family Connects program, we adopted a business development/sales approach to drive utilization. This project examined the effectiveness of this strategy. Research question: Can a business development/sales approach increase referrals from physician offices into a program? Hypothesis: Aligning referral processes with provider workflows, identifying mutual value with clinical partners, and addressing barriers will increase referrals and provider participation.
* Methods: Participants included families with newborns and referring physician practices. This project employed intervention procedures and methods of data collection and analysis over a two-year period. Intervention procedures applied business development and sales strategies to identify mutual value with clinical partners and align referral processes with provider workflows. Key activities included designing workflow-integrated referral processes, conducting targeted provider engagement, identifying and addressing barriers, and integrating pathways into healthcare systems. Instrumentation included EHR-based transmissions and faxed forms. Data collected included referral volume from physician offices, number of referring providers, and clinical sites. Measures were tracked to assess outreach effectiveness. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and trend analyses, including time series analysis, to evaluate changes in referral patterns and assess the impact of outreach strategies.
* Results: Referrals from physician offices increased from 0 to an average of 50/month, with growth in the number of referring clinical sites and providers. The capture rate relative to the estimated eligible population also improved. Trend and time series analyses demonstrated a sustained increase in referral volume.
* Implications: Business development strategies can transform public health outreach from promotion into a structured function that improves utilization. Organizations can replicate this approach using business strategies, resource allocation, and strategic relationship management to build sustainable, scalable access pathways.
* Additional time enables hands-on application, small-group discussion, and audience examples using a structured workbook.

Healthcare and public health systems are facing increasing pressures from workforce shortages, fragmented care coordination, behavioral health demands, rural access challenges, and growing community health inequities. Many organizations continue to operate independently, creating barriers to continuity of care, patient navigation, and coordinated workforce support.

This session explores how regional care coordination ecosystems—supported through collaborative command center models—can strengthen connected public health networks, improve equitable access, and support workforce resilience across communities.

Rather than focusing solely on hospital operations, this presentation reframes command centers as community coordination platforms capable of supporting:

* regional workforce collaboration,
* hybrid and virtual care coordination,
* behavioral health escalation pathways,
* patient navigation,
* rural specialty access,
* multilingual outreach,
* community health engagement,
* telehealth coordination,
* and continuity of care across settings.

Methods include interdisciplinary planning workshops, ecosystem mapping, operational workflow analysis, and collaborative future-state planning exercises involving healthcare systems, public health leaders, operational teams, clinicians, and infrastructure strategists.

Emerging findings suggest that connected coordination ecosystems can reduce fragmentation, improve communication pathways, strengthen workforce sustainability, and create more resilient systems capable of responding to both daily operational challenges and future public health emergencies.

The session also explores how digitally enabled coordination models may support underserved populations through improved navigation, outreach, and access pathways while strengthening collaboration between healthcare organizations and public health agencies.

Participants will leave with practical planning strategies, implementation considerations, and future-focused approaches for building stronger and more connected public health ecosystems across urban, rural, and regional communities.

Background/Purpose: Healthcare organizations can play a key role in addressing food insecurity among their patients. Although healthcare workers’ experiences and beliefs likely shape how their organizations address food insecurity, little is known about those perspectives, particularly in rural areas. We therefore sought to assess lived experience with and beliefs about food insecurity among healthcare staff and clinicians in western Colorado.

Methods: We distributed an online survey to healthcare organizations across western Colorado. Following descriptive and bivariate analyses, we used structural equation modeling to examine constructs of interest. These included perspectives attributing food insecurity to “structural” influences (e.g., high cost of food) and “individual” level influences (e.g., “budgeting poorly”), as well as perceived negative judgement around use of assistance programs.

Results: We received responses from 347 clinicians, support workers, and operations staff across 16 counties. Eighteen percent reported current food insecurity; 46% reported past food insecurity. Sixty-nine percent and 95% believed that food insecurity was caused by individual and structural influences, respectively. Over 60% believed that there was negative judgment around use of food assistance programs in their community. The structural equation modeling indicated that respondent factors (age, sex, personal experience with food insecurity) may influence 1) beliefs about causes of food insecurity and 2) perceived judgment around use of food assistance programs.

Implications: These findings raise concerns that nearly one-fifth of the health care workers surveyed were food insecure themselves as well as questions about how healthcare organizations can address food insecurity in an effective and non-stigmatizing manner.