Applied Health Science students must complete Health 480- Health Education Planning, Implementing & Evaluating 2. As part of this course, students get hands on experience collecting and analyzing data sets to determine the best actions to take to improve the health of the community.  Rural public health departments often lack capacity needed to collect, analyze and communicate about data. Through the work of CRPHI, local health department data needs from across the region were identified and the course instruction was modified to include classroom projects and assignments that helped meet those data needs. Students are analyzing data sets, such as the Minnesota Student Survey, and providing this information back to local health departments for use in their community health assessments or for determining other health projects. One of the course requirements is to use the What, So What and Now What concept to analyze and provide recommendations for action steps to improve health outcomes. This partnership ensures students get hands on experience working with data currently utilized by local public health departments. They become families with data resources which helps build their resume when applying for jobs after college.

Applied Health Science Health 480 students also supported local health departments by analyzing county specific trends over time utilizing electronic medical record collected through the new data source Health Trends Across Communities (HTAC). The HTAC project offers a valuable source of information on a range of chronic, behavioral and mental health conditions in Minnesota. HTAC is maintained by the Minnesota Electronic Health Records Consortium and can be accessed here: HTAC dashboard. This informaiton is critical in helping local health departments understand the health of our communities.

Applied Health Science Health 659 is a graduate level Health Administration course where students examine administrative functions such as policy setting, planning coordination, public issue involvement and community relations. In August 2023, Cannabis was legalized for recreational use in Minnesota. This law impacted local health departments as they worked to develop local ordinances and understand law provisions. As part of their coursework, students examined Minnesota's Cannabis Law as compared to 14 other states with legalized recreational cannabis. Findings are available to support local decision making and can help identify best practices and lessons learned.

Mental Health has been identified by all partner counties as a top health priority to address based on review of data. An upcoming project for CRPHI is to develop a mental health campaign. To effectively develop a campaign that resonates with multiple audiences, we needed to better understand our community groups. Students in Health 361: Communications and Advocacy supported local counties by completing interviews with different groups of people to understand their most trusted sources for information, the best communications channels to use when reaching out, values systems in place and some key message suggestions. These “persona worksheets” are essential in helping public health develop more effective communications campaigns ensuring time and funding spent has a good return on investment.

Students in the Health 361 course utilized data analyzed from the Health 480 course and developed icon arrays for use with reports, social media or other community facing avenues. Icon arrays display information in a way that makes it easy for the community to understand the impact of the data metric.