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.

Access to care is an important component of One Health efforts to provide care to people and pets. One Health Mobile Outreach, currently being piloted in Colorado, is a novel and innovative enterprise that takes interprofessional teams, primarily volunteer, to underserved areas of Colorado to provide free healthcare services in the form of a Community Health Fair. Typically the communities served are rural and relatively small. Teams include veterinary, medical, dental (human), social work, addiction counseling and other associated assistance, and the Health Fairs occur as one day events on weekends. Professional students, with preceptors, are an important component of the venture. Volunteer teams typically travel to one community each day within several hours drive of each other. One of the unique features of COHMO (Colorado One Health Mobile Outreach) is that the veterinary team is the umbrella organization, providing equipment and supplies for other providers and event coordination. Also, veterinarians and their team are effective at quickly establishing trust with pet owners and can serve as a bridge of trust to other healthcare practitioners, where there is often resistance on the part of individuals who may have had a negative experience previously, are wary of figures of authority or seek to avoid any discomfort or bad outcomes that may be involved.

Collaborative community healthcare is a novel model of providing preventive healthcare services to those in communities that are economically challenged, using the principle of Bring the Medicine to the People. It involves a One Health approach that integrates care for people and pets taking into account local environmental factors. There is a strong emphasis on dental care, the most neglected aspect of health care in underserved communities.

The presentation will be highly graphical and detail visits to multiple Colorado communities in the past several years.

Background/Purpose:
The Colorado State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup (SEOW) is a network of state agencies and data experts that collaborate to examine the patterns, context, and impacts of substance use to inform prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts across Colorado. In 2021, the Colorado SEOW conducted a statewide needs assessment with public health and prevention professionals that identified a strong need for timely, localized substance use data to support community decision-making. In response, the Colorado SEOW developed Health Statistics Regional Profiles. This presentation highlights key data from the 2026 profiles as a practical resource for local public health professionals, coalitions, and community organizations.

Methods:
The Regional Profiles include publicly available statewide and regional surveillance data from multiple public health and partner agency sources. Indicators include youth and adult substance use prevalence, risk and protective factors, alcohol and cannabis outlet density, prescription rates, mental health indicators, treatment utilization, and fatal and nonfatal overdose trends. Data were compiled and analyzed to identify regional patterns and emerging trends across Colorado. The publications are then reviewed by public health and subject matter experts for context and data visualization to ensure the data are easily digestible for all Coloradans interested in talking with their communities about substance use trends.

Results:
The 2026 Regional Profiles provide accessible, community-level insights into substance use trends. Findings demonstrate regional variation in substance use behaviors, behavioral health indicators, and prevention resources, highlighting the importance of localized data in informing targeted public health responses.

Implications:

Attendees will gain awareness of emerging substance use trends at both the state and regional levels and learn how to apply the Regional Profiles to support grant writing, community assessments, program planning, policy development, evaluation, and local prevention initiatives.

Background / Purpose: Rural communities face significant barriers to STI care, including limited local services, transportation challenges, cost, and stigma. In Grand County, the public health department is the only provider of free/reduced-cost sexual and reproductive health services. We aim to evaluate whether implementing on-site (point-of-care) gonorrhea and chlamydia (GC/CT) testing in a local public health department can improve timeliness of care and expand equitable access. We hypothesize that same-day testing and treatment will improve clinical outcomes and patient engagement. We will also consider the impact on clinic efficiency through reduced reliance on specimen transport and external lab processing.

Methods: A rural public health department will implement on-site GC/CT testing beginning June 2026 as part of comprehensive reproductive health services. Participants will include patients seeking STI testing and related care. Procedures will include same-visit specimen collection, rapid testing using a CLIA-waived platform, and immediate treatment when indicated. Data will be collected through the electronic medical record and program tracking tools, including visit volume, demographics, insurance status, language preference, and time to treatment. Descriptive analyses will assess changes in access and care delivery.

Results: Results are pending, as implementation will begin in June 2026. Anticipated outcomes include increased uptake of STI testing, reduced time to diagnosis and treatment, and decreased barriers to follow-up, particularly among uninsured and non-English speaking patients. We also will assess clinic efficiency through reduced reliance on specimen transport and external lab processing.

Implications: On-site GC/CT testing has the potential to improve access and reducing disparities via timely, patient-centered education, support, and treatment.

(Note: we could do a 30-minute presentation if preferred, however, there is a lot to present!)

The ability of public health professionals and institutions to fulfill their missions of advancing community health has become increasingly fraught. With fewer resources and heightened pressure to divest from health equity, it is imperative that we work creatively and collaboratively to ensure the well-being of all those in our community. Together, the Colorado Health Institute (CHI), Broomfield Public Health and Environment (BPHE), and Rocky Mountain Equality (RMEQ) propose a showcase on our collaborative and respective research on LGBTQ+ public health data in Colorado and our work to localize the data to make it actionable at the county level.

We will tell the story of our partnership along a visualized map of our journey — the moments that inspired us to pursue our data projects, the funding that supported us, and the findings we identified along the way. In this journey, we explore the search for data on loneliness and social isolation, and the challenges and opportunities presented to make the data relevant at the local level. That approach required this collaboration and the use of mixed methods to localize the data on the LGBTQ+ community in Broomfield.

We will share data from primary data collection efforts by BPHE as well as data from the Colorado Health Access Survey. The session will provide lessons learned throughout this two-year endeavor to showcase gaps and areas of opportunity for other LPHAs across the state. The unique and continuing journey of the partnership of CHI, BPHE, and RMEQ will encourage attendees to think about partnering with other organizations.

Presenters chose the one-hour session time because they want to engage with participants in their own journey mapping to understand where they could establish partnerships to meet the needs of community members.

Background: The Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) is a school-based health surveillance survey conducted in middle and high schools across the state. The oversample project partnership began in 2013 to increase representation of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Youth. Focused on schools within the Southwest Region 9 service area of the Albuquerque Area Southwest Tribal Epidemiology Center (AASTEC) within the Albuquerque Area Indian Health Board (AAIHB), the project’s priority is to develop representative youth data reports for partner Tribal Nations.

Methods: The HKCS is facilitated through a partnership between the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Colorado School of Public Health, and community networks. After survey completion, AAIHB/AASTEC staff travel to their service area to deliver gift bags to survey coordinators and teachers. Through a data agreement, AAIHB/AASTEC receives and cleans the dataset, creates reports, and responds to data inquiries for the Southwest Colorado Tribal area.

Results: HKCS and oversample participation metrics as well as statewide results of the 2025 data will be presented. Since 2013, AAIHB/AASTEC has been able to provide Southwest Colorado Tribal area reports and has the capacity to share yearly trend data and analysis of associated risk and protective factors among AI/AN youth.

Implications: The HKCS oversample project is a tool to leverage the experiences of AI/AN youth and promote resources for continued wellbeing. When there are lower numbers of survey responses and data are not representative of the population, small numbers can be easily skewed and misleading. With appropriate, well-intentioned, and protected dissemination of data, organizations have the capacity to better understand youths’ wellbeing and enact policy, programming, or apply for grants accordingly. It is important to build partnerships and awareness across schools so that we can work together to support the health of all youth.

Background and Purpose. A Community Health Assessment (CHA) highlights community strengths, uncovers public health disparities, and communicates critical health needs to multiple audiences. In rural and frontier communities, it can do something more: it can be a catalyst for community engagement, cross-sector partnership, and lasting trust between a health department and the residents it serves. Small, rural, and frontier local health departments (LHDs) often complete CHAs as compliance exercises, producing reports written in technical language that the communities they describe cannot access or use. This session showcases a community-driven approach developed across rural communities in the Pacific Northwest that treats the CHA process itself as an act of partnership.

Methods. The approach involves conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups with English- and Spanish-speaking residents and community leaders, then working with local health departments and community advisory boards to develop CHA reports that speak to the community and reflect their perspectives and insight. Quantitative evidence is presented using rural-appropriate techniques — including per-1,000 rather than per-100,000 rates that more honestly reflect small-population realities — and qualitative findings are woven in through direct resident quotes in both English and Spanish. Final reports are written in plain language with strengths-based framing and translated into Spanish so the full community can read and use them.

Results. Trust and rapport building, accountability, and transparency emerged as the most important factors in both data collection and report development. Communities reported feeling genuinely represented in the findings, and local partners used the reports as shared tools for cross-sector action rather than filing them away.

Implications. Attendees will learn how to engage their community and leave with a sample engagement timeline, a plain-language reporting checklist, and reflection prompts for applying this approach in Colorado's rural and frontier context.

Diet-related chronic health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the United States. Food is Medicine (FIM) interventions have emerged as a crucial component of state and federal strategies to address the root causes of chronic disease and the complications of severe and complex conditions, as well as rising healthcare costs and other multifaceted priorities. FIM interventions encompass a spectrum of nutrition services, including medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries, and produce prescriptions, which are tailored to patient needs and integrated into the healthcare system through referrals from medical providers.

Founded in Denver, Project Angel Heart has been preparing and delivering medically tailored meals to Coloradans living with severe illnesses for over 30 years. As part of our FY2021-FY2025 Strategic Plan, the organization undertook an ambitious geographic expansion, tripling our service area to encompass 17 counties and over 85% of Colorado’s population. This session will reflect on the strategies and tactics that led to the success of the geographic expansion, and share lessons learned during its implementation.

Public health is built on systems thinking - so why does changing our own systems feel so hard?

This interactive session explores the tension between public health’s desire for innovation and the organizational cultures that often reward caution, compliance, consensus, and risk avoidance. Rather than offering polished success stories, this session creates space for an honest conversation about the realities many practitioners, leaders, educators, and students are already navigating.

Drawing from experiences in workforce development, leadership, epidemiology, teaching, innovation, and community practice, the presenters will explore how organizational culture shapes whose ideas move forward, how change is experienced by teams, and why even well-intentioned systems can struggle to adapt. Participants will reflect on the human cost of constant adaptation, the challenges of leading through uncertainty, and the paradox of asking burned-out systems to continuously transform.

This session is designed to be thoughtful, practical, and interactive. Participants should expect candid discussion, audience engagement, shared reflection, and concrete strategies for navigating change in ways that are more adaptive, relational, and sustainable.

Public health systems and healthcare organizations are facing increasing pressures from workforce shortages, fragmented care coordination, rising behavioral health needs, and inequitable access to care. At the same time, many healthcare facilities continue to be planned using siloed approaches that separate operations, infrastructure, technology, and patient experience planning.

This session explores how “digital visioning” and ecosystem-based planning can support stronger, more connected, and more equitable healthcare systems before construction and implementation begin.

Using real-world healthcare planning initiatives, this presentation demonstrates how collaborative planning approaches can strengthen public health infrastructure by aligning clinicians, operations leaders, public health professionals, facilities teams, architects, engineers, and technology strategists around shared community health goals.

Topics include:

* Hybrid and virtual care ecosystems
* Smart patient environments supporting workforce resilience
* Operational coordination and communication strategies
* Digitally enabled patient navigation and engagement
* Future-ready infrastructure supporting adaptability and sustainability
* Cross-disciplinary planning models that reduce fragmentation and improve connectedness

Methods include interdisciplinary workshops, future-state operational mapping, capability assessments, and collaborative planning exercises focused on equitable and resilient healthcare delivery.

Emerging outcomes demonstrate improved organizational alignment, stronger workforce support strategies, enhanced patient access pathways, and increased readiness for future healthcare challenges.

Participants will leave with practical strategies for integrating health equity, connectedness, collaboration, and long-term resilience into healthcare planning initiatives that support healthier communities across Colorado and beyond.