RVPHTC Blog

The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute PHIG Spotlight series provides a monthly space for Wisconsin local and tribal public health departments to share promising practices and lessons learned with an audience of colleagues throughout the state, creating peer-to-peer development of the public health workforce.

What comes through most clearly is that these associations don’t replace local health departments or state agencies. They sit in between, making it easier for both sides to do their work.

There are three main themes of these objectives in every iteration of the program: 1) Practice adaptive leadership skills to guide organizational, community, and systems change; 2) Identify approaches for creating a culture of learning within their agencies; and 3) Apply strategies to foster a supportive workplace culture for a diverse workforce in their agencies. This blog post describes results of the outcome evaluation that was performed to assess if the RVPHLI met these goals.

This relationship can be described as the public health equivalent of the “teaching hospital” affiliation found between hospitals and medical schools.

In many organizations, there is an instinct to seek out “the expert”, the person who is expected to have all the answers, carry the knowledge, and lead the way. While expertise certainly has value, I’ve come to believe that focusing on building teams around the work is far more effective.

We need community-based systems changes to public health approaches, now more than ever. The LASC Toolkit 2.0 is an action-oriented, evidence-informed, field-tested process for organizations to collaborate with their partners and communities to use transformative learning as a driver for equity-focused systems change.

Running in Ann Arbor during the summer of 2025 feels like dodging chaos - smoke from wildfires, impatient drivers, the occasional rogue goose. But somehow, that unpredictability mirrors what I’ve found in FPHLP: a fast-paced and surprisingly hopeful dive into public health.

As a doctoral student in public health, I recently had the opportunity to participate in a short-term academic immersion in the United Kingdom, focused on the structure, function, and policy landscape of their health system. The experience provided a valuable comparative lens for understanding how government structures, financing mechanisms, and community-based organizations intersect to shape population health.

As public health practitioners, we cannot afford to let the evidence speak for itself anymore. We need to be proper stewards of the evidence on behalf of our communities and their leaders.

The Public Health Corps gave me an opportunity to explore the field of public health from directly within it. With a jarring start to being an adult, and feeling utterly lost as to what my path and career would look like, the Corps has been an invaluable source of stability and education. This article is a very brief collection of my experiences and takeaways from my service term, as well as reasoning for my optimism about the future of public health, from the perspective of someone just beginning a potential career.