Background/Purpose: EMS readiness requires financial sustainability and predictability. Yet EMS organizations face a fundamental financing problem: they are reimbursed only for transports, creating perverse incentives misaligned with community health needs and emerging evidence on optimal care delivery. This financing structure threatens EMS readiness by limiting innovation and sustainable operations. Communities increasingly seek alternatives, such as treatment-in-place, integration with other health care facilities or community paramedicine, but financing barriers often prevent implementation. Understanding this landscape is essential for public health professionals partnering with EMS to find solutions for strengthening community readiness and access to care.
Methods: This session combines a landscape-setting presentation (15 minutes) with a facilitated panel discussion (40 minutes). The presentation will describe: how current EMS reimbursement undermine readiness; variation in community preferences for service types; and policy solutions emerging at local, state and federal levels. The panel then features EMS leaders implementing real-world alternatives that strengthen readiness and improve health care access while also requiring different payment approaches: treatment-in-place payment pilots, partnering with healthcare facilities, and community paramedicine programs. Audience Q&A and discussion follow.
Results/Key Findings: Participants will understand how financing structures directly affect EMS readiness; barriers to sustainable service delivery and health equity; concrete examples of alternative models that enhance readiness; and policy pathways forward.
Implications: "Stronger Together" requires public health professionals to understand EMS financing as central to readiness and policy solutions that align incentives with community health goals.
This structure requires 60 minutes to accomplish three goals: (1) establish a shared understanding of how financing impacts EMS readiness through a focused presentation; (2) showcase real-world solutions that strengthen readiness through panelist dialogue; and (3) enable meaningful audience engagement. This sequencing maximizes learning and interactive discussion. Dr. Buttorff will moderate the panel discussion and facilitate the audience Q&A.
Amy Downs is the founder and president of Results Count Consulting Group, which supports non-profit, public sector and community-based organizations in the health and social sectors with policy analysis and development; program design and implementation; community and stakeholder... Read More →
Community Engagement is the most important, yet often the most under resourced work for Local Public Health Agencies. Eagle County Public Health and Environment (ECPHE) has been exploring how AI can build department wide infrastructure to support Community Engagement work. Two use cases have been implemented at ECPHE: qualitative coding of community gathered data in Gemini and the creation of an AI toolkit in NotebookLM.
In 2023 ECPHE involved hundreds of Eagle County residents in the creation of the Public Health Improvement Plan and performed a qualitative analysis to identify key codes present in the data. This process was done manually, involving 25 staff and taking hundreds of people hours to complete. In 2025 ECPHE replicated this coding process by using a Gemini Gem to categorize community statements. The AI results were substantially similar to the results from human coding and were provided in a fraction of the time. This process is being used in ECPHE’s planning processes such as the recent Aging Well Roadmap. In 2025 ECPHE created a community engagement toolkit in NotebookLM, incorporating a community engagement model, information from the ‘Community Toolbox’ and data on Eagle County, the toolbox is being used by staff as a planning aide for Community Engagement activities. These tools are not intended to replace human relationships or the relational nature of community engagement. Rather, they are designed to strengthen this work by adding a layer of support that allows staff to better understand, organize, and act on community voice.
Background / Purpose: Coverage gaps in Medicaid and CHP+ disproportionately harm children of color and low-income families. Continuous enrollment (CE) strengthens coverage stability by eliminating reapplication requirements until a designated age. During the COVID 19 Public Health Emergency, suspended eligibility redeterminations expanded stable coverage, followed by sharp enrollment declines after April 2023. These shifts highlight how coverage continuity influences health care utilization and costs, informing policy decisions on expanding CE for young children.
Methods: Researchers conducted a cross sectional analysis of Colorado All Payer Claims Database data (2018–2024). Children ages 0–6 with Medicaid or CHP+ coverage were stratified by enrollment status (CE: ≥11 months/year; non-CE:
Senior Evaluation, Innovation, and Research Analyst, Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC)
Megha Jha, BDS, MPH, is a Senior Evaluation, Innovation & Research Analyst at the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC), where she leads and supports advanced evaluation and analytic initiatives using the Colorado All Payer Claims Database (CO APCD). Her research focuses... Read More →
Background/Purpose: As H.R. 1 threatens significant Medicaid and ACA cuts, low-income and immigrant communities in Colorado face compounding barriers to maintaining health coverage: language access gaps, institutional distrust, and rapidly shifting eligibility rules. Safety-net clinics serving these populations need outreach models that can meet communities where they are; in trusted settings, in their language, with accurate information, rather than waiting for community members to navigate complex systems alone.
Methods: Doctors Care, a free safety-net clinic in the Denver metro area, developed a structured Community Ambassador program delivered through subcontracted community-based organizations using a promotora model. Ambassadors are recruited from within the communities they serve and trained using bilingual curriculum materials covering Colorado's health coverage landscape, referral consent workflows, and plain-language responses to emerging community concerns, including federal data-sharing proposals affecting Medicaid and Cover All Coloradans enrollees. Education sessions are conducted in trusted settings including the Mexican Consulate's Ventanilla de Salud program.
Results: Program implementation is ongoing. Qualitative outcomes include increased community awareness of coverage options, strengthened referral pathways between community settings and clinic-based coverage specialists, and ambassador capacity to provide accurate, non-alarmist information on data privacy questions that are actively deterring enrollment.
Implications: Safety-net organizations can build resilient, equity-centered outreach infrastructure by investing in trusted community members as health coverage navigators. This session will equip attendees to describe a replicable ambassador referral model, identify curriculum components for training trusted messengers, and explain how to address data privacy concerns with plain-language health coverage information. In a volatile policy environment, community relationships are both the strategy and the buffer.
