Extension educators across the United States are being asked to expand their direct education efforts to include policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes. However, professional development opportunities and tools are needed to familiarize Extension professionals with PSE change approaches, build their capacity to implement PSE change, and…

In the fall of 2015, Northern Kentucky University began a sustained, multidimensional effort to explore our region's devastating heroin epidemic. The goal was to engage NKU's students, faculty, and staff with the community through public dialogue, experiential learning, and research. Taken together, our engagements would contribute to public…

The COVID-19 Education Continuation Plan presented in this report is designed to maximize instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic while using non-traditional instruction (NTI) to reach 1,062 hours of instruction in all Kentucky school districts prior to May 29, 2020. This plan assumes school closure for in-person classes for the remainder of the…

Social distancing and school closures forced by the COVID-19 pandemic present extraordinary challenges for education. While the nation is just beginning to understand the impact of the last few months and what the months ahead will mean for students, families, and educators, the depth of students' connectedness to school and the quality of their…

From the early stages of photography, photographs have been used as a method of depicting social relationships and structures. Often, photographs intending to draw attention to social and economic needs were recorded from an "outsider's" perspective. As a result, regions such as Appalachia have been portrayed as fundamentally different…

This article describes a consulting project with an advocacy organization to raise cigarette excise taxes in Kentucky and to improve public health in the state. We describe the theoretical underpinnings of the project, the client, and our consultation process, objectives, products, and results.

An experimental health-care delivery and teaching model, the health department-medical school affiliation, is described. Its conceptual basis and the affiliation agreement are reviewed and its impact is likened to that of the medical school-teaching hospital affiliation. The affiliation between the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department and…

Complex community health promotion programs are being held accountable for their effectiveness, but rural public health departments lack staff and expertise to carry out evaluations. In Kentucky, a university evaluation expert trains local public health staff in technical skills for program evaluation and provides ongoing mentoring and technical…