On November 12, 2024, Community Health Partnerships hosted “Community Collaborative Engagement Day” at the Beck Agricultural Center in West Lafayette to provide an opportunity for partners from across the state to learn about work being done to improve health for all residents of Indiana, as well as resources, tools, and collaborations available to support those efforts. The event served as their annual meeting.
Azeez Aina presents.
Ninety-seven participants were welcomed by Sarah Wiehe, MD, MPH, director of Community Health Partnerships and co-director of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, and Kei Hui, MD, First Lady of Purdue University.
The featured morning speaker was Azeez Aina, a graduate student in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at Purdue. Aina discussed a project that, in partnership with the Indiana Health Equity Council and community health workers (CHW), aimed to utilize data to identify the needs of the public health districts of Indiana, and leverage CHW’s core competencies to address those needs efficiently and effectively, while also facilitating collaborations among CHWs, individuals, and community-based organizations.
Participants during a breakout session brainstorm together.
The event also gave the 2022 Trailblazer Awardees an opportunity to celebrate their successes and present findings from their projects. Six projects co-led by community-academic teams were featured, including projects addressing maternal mortality, medical debt and bankruptcy, health care access, prevention of sexual violence, and support for vulnerable caregivers. Breakout sessions throughout the day included workshops on grant writing, using artificial intelligence, area health education centers, Purdue University and health equity, community health worker health equity councils, and human centered design.
The afternoon session featured Randolph Hubach, PhD, director of the Center for Rural and Migrant Health and the Sexual Health Research Lab at Purdue. He shared the work being done by the center and emphasized the importance of community-academic partnerships to the advancement of public health.
The event concluded with a panel moderated by Mike Sutton, Health First Indiana central region director, and included representatives from local health departments in Huntington, Porter and Hendricks counties, who discussed their experiences collaborating with local partners for implementation of Health First Indiana goals and reaching key performance indicators.
The Community Health Partnerships Team poses together.
