Overview

Our practice and partnerships goal: We will build ethical and equitable collaborations with local, regional, and global partners to engage communities and translate our research into mutually beneficial public health practices, policies, and programs.

To achieve our practice and partnerships goal, we set three specific objectives:

• Grow institutional and infrastructure support for applied public health practice.
• Cultivate diverse, equitable, and mutually advantageous partnerships to enhance responsiveness to local, national, and global public health needs.
• Establish a pipeline of initiatives that develop and grow practitioners from both academia and the broader health community.

In the first year, we have achieved great progress in advancing these objectives. Our accomplishments so far underscore our commitment to establishing a strong foundation for applied public health practice. By prioritizing strategic appointments, symposium planning, and partnership cultivation, we are laying the groundwork for sustained collaboration and meaningful impact in addressing public health challenges at local, national, and global levels.

Key Achievements

Grow institutional and infrastructure support for applied public health practice. 

• Expanded practice-relevant initiatives of multiple centers across the school engaged in technical assistance, training, and other practice partnerships. These include the Emory Centers for Training and Technical Assistance; the new Emory Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analytics and Training Hub; Climate and Health Indicator Dashboard for Georgia and the Climate and Health Actionable Research and Translation Center; an Emory and Morehouse Equity-Centered Violence and Injury Prevention Pathway Development Program; and our collaboration with Morehouse School of Medicine, Mercer University, and Research!America to address the maternal health crisis.
• Completed first year of a fully reimagined Woodruff Health Sciences Center Interprofessional Education—Achieving Collaborative Solutions experience.
• Collaborating with Emory Healthcare on multiple initiatives that bring public health expertise and evidence to health care practice.
• Preparing to launch a DrPH program to support and expand the expertise of public health practitioners in the workforce.

Cultivate diverse, equitable, and mutually advantageous partnerships to enhance responsiveness to local, national, and global public health needs. 

• Appointed Allison Chamberlain, PhD, as the director of research and practice relations with the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). Her role is to facilitate research and practice partnerships with the various state and local DPH entities.
• Engaged with government and community-based organizations regarding advocacy for public health, communication and information exchange, and collaborative funding.

Overview

Our people goal: We will cultivate a school where all members of our community have opportunities for professional growth and feel included, respected, and valued.

To achieve our people goal, we set three specific objectives:

• Enhance resources and create opportunities to ensure that students, alumni, staff, and faculty can reach their professional goals and realize their full career potential.
• Build bridges within our community that foster a shared culture of collaboration and belonging.
• Strengthen operational excellence to support a culture of effectiveness, accountability, transparency, and trust.

As we continuously advance resources and opportunities that empower individuals in our community, we have remained steadfast in our commitment to supporting the professional growth and development of our students, alumni, staff, and faculty. We have focused our efforts on several strategic initiatives aimed at fostering a culture of excellence, collaboration, and inclusivity. These initiatives encompass a wide range of endeavors, including enhancing onboarding processes for new faculty, developing comprehensive career development programs for staff members, and facilitating networking opportunities through various engaging events hosted by the staff council.

Moreover, we have taken proactive steps to address critical issues such as staff food insecurity by establishing dedicated task force committees and initiating comprehensive evaluations to identify prevalent challenges and recommend sustainable solutions. Concurrently, our commitment to operational excellence has driven us to develop robust metrics for monitoring system performance, streamline data reporting processes, and ensure seamless functionality of our grants management system.

Through these collective efforts, Rollins continues to foster an environment where individuals can realize their full potential and contribute meaningfully to our shared mission of advancing public health.

Key Achievements

Enhance resources and create opportunities to ensure that students, alumni, staff, and faculty can reach their professional goals and realize their full career potential.

• Implemented an individualized faculty onboarding process, including personalized meetings, comprehensive overview of Emory systems, comprehensive review of promotion guidelines and tenure considerations, and assignment of a navigator to address diverse needs.
• Launched a comprehensive staff career development series with 18 key topic areas.
• Developing a SharePoint page designed to streamline access to HR information and implementing a ticketing system for enhanced efficiency and accountability.

Build bridges within our community that foster a shared culture of collaboration and belonging.

• Organized diverse networking events facilitated by the Rollins Staff Council. Plans are underway for a comprehensive calendar of events for FY25.

• Established a task force to address staff food insecurity, led by faculty and staff members, with student involvement in survey and evaluation design.

Strengthen operational excellence to support a culture of effectiveness, accountability, transparency, and trust.

• Developed initial metrics to monitor central systems performance and service levels, including finalizing the transition of ROAR to a cradle-to-grave approach.
• Identified key data needs across central units to facilitate accurate and timely reporting to leadership and faculty.
• Leading the implementation of a grants management system that ensures functional operations and reporting meet faculty and staff requirements, improving efficiency, operations, and reporting capabilities.
• Established a grant deadline policy to promote team accountability and ensure the timely, accurate submission of research funding applications, while also maintaining a healthy work-life balance for our staff.

Overview

Our diversity, equity, and inclusion goal: We will center diversity, equity, and inclusion in our identity through our research, practice, operations, and educational activities.

To achieve our DEI goal, we set two specific objectives:

• Establish a school-wide accountability structure to achieve our diversity, equity, and inclusion standards.
• Integrate values of diversity, equity, and inclusion across all aspects of our mission.

All of the activities across Strategic Plan goals are anchored on our commitment to fostering an environment where every individual feels valued, respected, and empowered to thrive.  In pursuit of this, we have enhanced or initiated structures to highlight our DEI efforts and hold each other accountable to our goals, including curriculum support; training for faculty, staff, and students; support for student organizations dedicated to DEI; and programming dedicated to awareness and scholarship around DEI, racial trauma, and inclusivity.

Key Achievements

Establish a school-wide accountability structure to achieve our diversity, equity, and inclusion standards.

• Initiated the student bias reporting navigation tool to assist faculty, staff, and students in clearly understanding their options for reporting possible bias and discrimination incidences.
• Highlighted expectations for DEI activities during annual reviews of faculty and staff, including completion of DEI-related training modules.
• Contributed to a recruitment guidance document for faculty searches, including considerations of diversity and equity during the recruitment and hiring process.
• Continued support for our Community and Diversity Committee and departmental DEI committee and student organizations, totaling over 70 faculty, staff, and students engaged in DEI activities across the school.

Integrate values of diversity, equity, and inclusion across all aspects of our mission.

• Completed the fourth cycle of the Health Professions Readiness Education Program (HealthPREP) summer pathway program. To date, 20 Rollins graduate teaching assistants have served as HealthPREP mentors and teachers to nearly 100 HealthPREP scholars. Notably, two of the 2023 Rollins HealthPREP teaching assistants were graduates of earlier cycles of the HealthPREP program and are now Rollins students. HealthPREP was renewed for another five years in 2023, with a new program focusing on social determinants of health beginning in June 2024.
• Implemented the DEI curriculum assessment tool to foster ongoing reflection and improvement of course content and implementation through the DEI lens.
• Promoted DEI professional development and education at the department and school level to provide learning opportunities for faculty, staff, and students through DEI-related seminars, courses, workshops, trainings, and special retreats.
• Hosted a two-part educational series on racial trauma.

Overview

Our communications goal: Promote and strengthen trust in public health information.

To achieve our communications goal, we set four specific objectives:

• Inform public health discourse and decision-making through thought leadership globally and locally.
• Increase the reach and impact of our research with new and innovative communications strategies.
• Develop a training infrastructure to teach faculty, staff, and students to be trusted and authentic public health communicators.
• Deepen relationships with local communities, sharing Rollins’ public health findings with Georgia residents to help them advance their own health goals.

At a time when it is more important than ever to ensure accurate and trustworthy public health information is available to the public, we are thrilled that in less than a year, we have made major strides toward each of our objectives.

At a foundational level, we have strengthened and evolved the Rollins communications team, adding critical team members and positioning all staff in the right roles.

With a strong communications team in place, we have bolstered our ability to support communications needs across the school.  To enhance our thought leadership, we have significantly improved Rollins faculty and researcher engagement with the media—increasing media access of our experts and our overall impressions in major press outlets. And we have launched new faculty media training programs as well as strengthened how we support faculty in engaging with the media on an ongoing basis.

Over the past year, we have developed a multitude of new and innovative communications strategies to increase the reach and impact of our research. Highlights include launching a highly successful new Rollins public health and science communications-focused Instagram account, evolving our Rollins Magazine, and increasing the frequency of Rollins news content, as well as developing new article types.

Additionally, in August 2024, Rollins launched a new weekly one-hour radio show and podcast with Atlanta NPR-affiliate WABE, which we co-produce: Health Wanted.

Since September 2023, we have also kicked off a number of public health and science communication training initiatives to teach faculty, staff, and students to be trusted and authentic public health communicators. These efforts have included in-house media training and partnering with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. We have provided training through one-on-one sessions, small-group workshops, guest lectures, and recorded seminars.

We continue to prioritize community-centered content, both to strengthen our relationships with all communities and to share Rollins’ public health findings with Georgia residents to help them advance their own health goals. We regularly publish content on our new Instagram channel to address timely topics and combat misinformation and disinformation that circulates within local communities.

Key Achievements

Inform public health discourse and decision-making through thought leadership globally and locally.

• Supported more than 200 one-on-one conversations between Rollins faculty and media from Sept. 2023-July 2024.
• Developed a new Rollins experts web page to make it easier for media and policymakers to find and connect with our faculty and researchers.

Increase the reach and impact of our research with new and innovative communications strategies.

• Launched a new radio show and podcast with Atlanta NPR-affiliate WABE, which we co-produce: Health Wanted.
• Created a new Rollins Instagram channel, which has gained 20,000 followers since launch and has a very high level of engagement, with many posts receiving between 1,000 and 2,000 likes.
• Started a new Ask an Expert article series.
• Evolved Rollins Magazine—expanding its reach and reshaping its focus.
• Revamped the monthly Rollins Public Health News newsletter to be more engaging and easier to consume across devices.
• Published new article types that are more web-friendly, easy-to-scan, and relevant to Rollins and trending public health topics.

Develop a training infrastructure to teach faculty, staff, and students to be trusted and authentic public health communicators.

• Launched SciComm Together, the Rollins science communication lecture series.
• Hosted the Alan Alda Science Communications 2-day workshop, training 25 faculty.
• Provided three to five individual faculty media interview prep sessions each month from Sept. 2023-July 2024.
• Conducted four in-house media trainings from Sept. 2023-Feb. 2024—training 20 faculty in live sessions and providing a recorded session to more than 100 faculty. The small-group sessions were three-hour training that included on-camera practice.
• Gave guest lectures about science communication and working with the media in Rollins classes. Taught three sessions during fall semester 2023, training approximately 200 Rollins students.

Deepen relationships with local communities, sharing Rollins’ public health findings with Georgia residents to help them advance their own health goals.

• Posted public health information to the new Rollins Instagram channel, which has an audience of over 20,000 followers and a very high level of engagement.
• Collaborated with the CDC to host a webinar on science communication for Rollins and CDC staff.
• Developed a weekly radio show and podcast on public health, Health Wanted, to be aired on WABE, an Atlanta public radio station, with potential broadcast across national markets.

Overview

Our education goal: We will broaden who we teach, diversify how we teach, and enrich what we teach in response to evolving public health priorities and emerging challenges.

To achieve our education goal, we set three specific objectives:

• Increase access to our educational programs to meet the diverse and evolving needs of a wide range of students and professionals.
• Innovate how we teach by leveraging new pedagogical tools and technology to support teaching excellence and inclusive training experiences.
• Enhance our educational content so students are prepared to engage in multisectoral public health research and practice, addressing current and emerging public health challenges and prioritizing social justice and health equity.

We recognize the multifaceted challenges that today’s public health workforce faces within dynamic social, economic, and political environments. Acquiring new skills to tackle these complexities does not always necessitate pursuing a degree. To address the needs of professionals who wish to expand their expertise without committing to a degree program, we launched the Rollins Health Education Institute (RHEDI). This initiative serves as an educational hub, offering short courses created by our faculty. Specifically tailored for public health practitioners, Rollins alumni, Emory staff, and other professionals, RHEDI provides a pathway for lifelong learning in public health.

A foundational component of our strategic initiatives revolves around enhancing educational accessibility by delivering high-quality programs online.  The increased flexibility of our expanded online offerings will benefit part-time degree students balancing personal and professional demands as well as current residential students, such as medical residency fellows and those seeking dual degrees with other Emory programs.

Another way that we are expanding access to our educational programs, innovating how we teach through the development of online course offerings, and enhancing our educational content is by offering a new DrPH program at the school. This program will prepare students to engage in multisectoral public health research and practice while prioritizing social justice and health equity. Through all these educational initiatives, we aim to empower individuals in our community to address current and emerging public health challenges effectively.

Key Achievements

Increase access to our educational programs to meet the diverse and evolving needs of a wide range of students and professionals.

• Offered five RHEDI courses in summer 2024, including remote learning options to reach a wider set of learners.
• Expanded support for our degree-seeking students who need additional or refreshed quantitative training through the creation of an online self-paced instructional module called “Quantitative Essentials for Public Health.”
• Adopted new academic policies to support students’ academic success in cases where they experience significant and unforeseen circumstances that temporarily impact their performance.

Innovate how we teach by leveraging new pedagogical tools and technology to support teaching excellence and inclusive training experiences.

• Developed online part-time degree programs in behavioral, social, and health education sciences; global environmental health; global health; and health policy.
• Supported development of online courses for RHEDI.
• Enhanced capacity in instructional design and pedagogical expertise to support faculty and instructors as they develop their online courses.
• Created a mechanism to offer a financial incentive to faculty upon the development of their first online course.
• Updated the Rollins TLC website with new information and teaching tools as needed to ensure it remains a resource to faculty for best teaching practices.
• Collaborated with the Office of Career Development to assess strategies to better align programs and services with the unique career trajectories of PhD graduates.

Enhance our educational content so students are prepared to engage in multisectoral public health research and practice, addressing current and emerging public health challenges and prioritizing social justice and health equity. 

• Received approval for a new, fully online DrPH program which will enroll its first cohort for fall semester 2025.
• Established a new MPH/Master in Management dual degree program with Goizueta Business School. This program is open to enroll students in fall semester 2024.
• Initiated the development of doctoral-level grant-writing course for students across our programs in response to feedback from the Doctoral Student Advisory Board.

Overview

Our research goal: We will advance public health science that improves health and health equity through rigorous, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research.

To achieve our research goal, we set three specific objectives:

• Encourage scientific innovation and growth of research that enhances our current strengths and addresses critical and emerging areas of need.
• Become the global leader in impactful public health equity research.
• Invest in infrastructure that cultivates research success.

Our specific activities include several initiatives to foster a culture of excellence and collaboration among our faculty, such as implementing a faculty research incentive policy that recognizes exceptional contributions while upholding our collegial ethos. Moreover, our commitment to supporting early career faculty through mentoring programs and comprehensive onboarding has laid a strong foundation for their success. We have also prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts through comprehensive reviews of promotion guidelines and tenure considerations, ensuring inclusivity in our evaluation processes.

We have reimagined our research support services through the Rollins Office of Research and Administration (ROAR), which provides tailored assistance for grant submissions and program development. Our focus on health equity research, alongside initiatives like the grant-writing course for doctoral students and administrative supplements for workforce diversification, reflects our dedication to addressing pressing public health challenges. Through these concerted efforts, we are advancing our mission to develop and lead impactful research at Rollins.

Key Achievements

Encourage scientific innovation and growth of research that enhances our current strengths and addresses critical and emerging areas of need.

• Developed a faculty research incentive policy to reward faculty who exceed expectations and make exceptional contributions to the school.
• Supported pilot projects to enhance scholarship in key topical areas.
• Established Rollins Research Hubs that bring together faculty across the school engaged in a specific key topical area to: (1) exchange ideas and information on current projects; (2) plan symposia, retreats, or other research community building efforts in the area; and (3) develop collaborative pilot projects that can lead to larger funding opportunities and impact.
• Implemented a mentoring program to ensure that early-career faculty receive comprehensive support.

Become the global leader in impactful public health equity research.

• Reviewing our faculty promotion guidelines to ensure our considerations of excellence include a commitment to health equity research.
• Supporting faculty in developing large program applications, including a collaborative grant to work with service sectors to develop structural interventions.
• Establishing a Rollins Research Hub in health equity.

Invest in infrastructure that cultivates research success.

• Developed a comprehensive onboarding program to provide new faculty with the information and tools they need to support their transition to Rollins.
• Developed and implemented a grant submission policy to ensure the highest quality applications with the greatest chance of success while also preserving the wellness of our research support staff.
• Supported faculty in developing competitive and engaging grant proposals, prioritizing support for early-career faculty and new and larger programs.
• Identified a consistent stream of resources to support faculty research program development.
• Reimagined research support by developing and implementing ROAR.
• Supported PhD program growth, including developing a new grant-writing course for doctoral students and providing information on alternative funding opportunities, including diversity supplements, for doctoral students.