Minnesota Society for Public Health Education Award Winners include representatives from CRPHI!

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Chapter for the Society of Public Health Education (SOPHE) held their annual summit and presented awards to leaders from across Minnesota. 

Vlada Gladis, Manager for the Collaborative for Rural Public Health Innovation (CRPHI) received the Pioneer Award.  This designation is awarded to individuals who are at the forefront of innovation in Public Health. 

"We are working in collaboration to ensure all public health agencies in southern Minnesota are able to fully implement public health responsibilities, such as collecting, gathering and analyzing data to better understand the health needs of a community and communicating that information to the public in real time." Gladis said. 

Working in collaboration helps reduce duplication and is a better use of taxpayer dollars. 

"Rural community health departments do not often have the resources to positions that are dedicated to just working on data, or communications. Often, staff assume multiple roles and serve multiple grant programs. By working in partnership, we are able to support all departments to meet their responsibilities without each agency needing to add significant numbers of staff or pay huge costs to complete mandates such completing a community health assessment." 

The partnership with Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU, M) also demonstrates innovation within the field of Public Health. Gladis says, "We are training the future workforce by implementing projects and learning in the classroom and through internships. These future Public Health educators will gain skills that will help them land a job and hit the ground running from day one." She also shared, "Utilizing student and faculty support and capacity has sped up the process of helping our departments meet outcomes that could have taken years to complete without that level of support."

"We have great partnerships and great communication," she said. "I'm really glad to be able to have this award, because I truly feel like we all share it. We're all the innovators and pioneers in public health." 

Also winning an award was Lindsay Chapman-Nesseth, a member of the CRPHI Communications Committee. She was awarded with the Team Work Titan Award!  In all, six of the nine awards were presented to public health agencies represented in CRPHI!