PHIL partnered with the State of Vermont and Vermont ACH sites to co-create the Peer Learning Lab, which supported teams from 10 communities statewide to test ACH implementation while increasing community capacity and readiness across the 9 Core Elements. This work included utilizing in-person and distance learning methods to support peer learning and community facilitation to support each community’s development over eight months. See the report to learn more.

The Population Health Innovation Lab is thrilled to share its approach, methods, lessons learned, and outcomes resulting from a multi-year effort to build a Community of Practice focused on community engagement and inclusion in California.

The CDC Foundation, in partnership with CDC and with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, collaborated with PHIL and Anderson Smith Consulting on an exploratory project to identify and understand underlying factors that lead to successful implementation of two HI-5 CWIs: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the introduction or expansion of public transportation systems. Read the report to learn more.

Through key informant interviews, this practice paper explores experiences regarding ACE screening from the perspective of Medi-Cal pediatric and family practice providers in rural Northern California to identify and understand barriers and facilitators in implementing ACE screening and best practices for trauma-informed care in the region. Supported by the California ACEs Aware Initiative, this research focuses on the six counties participating in PHIL’s Northern ACEs Collaborative (NAC), a multisector collaborative of 28 agencies working in Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Shasta, Tehama, and Trinity counties.

In 2021, the Population Health Innovation Lab’s Division of Research and Network Science conducted a study with six Accountable Communities of/for Health (ACH) in Washington and California that sought in-depth answers to the question: “How do local context and power dynamics influence an ACH’s ability to make progress toward improved equity?” Findings from this study are available in this report.

The “Improving Population Health Through Multisector Collaboration” brief series synthesizes lessons learned from PHIL’s Aligning Systems for Health research conducted from May 2020 – November 2022 in six parts. Visit our brief series webpage to access all six briefs.

Resilience Catalysts in Public Health (RC) is a national collaborative of local health departments seeking to eliminate adversity, build resilience, and foster equity. Using the Community Resilience Framework, which is aligned with the goals of Public Health 3.0, RC sites receive technical assistance (TA) to apply a public health approach to address adverse childhood experiences and adverse community environments. In April and May 2023, PHIL conducted an evaluation of RC, surveying 29 individuals from 11 of the 13 RC sites and interviewing 19 individuals from nine sites and 14 TA providers/funders. Evaluation findings expand understanding of RC’s preliminary impact and inform implications for theory, practice, and funding in the post-COVID-19 context. Download the Full Report | Download the Infographic

The Population Health Innovation Lab (PHIL) partnered with the Office of Rural Health (ORH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop The Cookbook: A Guide to Using CDC Data for Rural Analysis. This resource was created to increase awareness and understanding of rural variables available in public health datasets provided by CDC, which can be used to help inform the rural public health knowledge base. The Cookbook provides step-by-step instructions (i.e., recipes) for accessing and processing CDC data for secondary analysis for rural public health research. Download the Cookbook Development Brief | Download the Cookbook Methods Brief

Held in December 2025, the 4th Annual Rural ACEs Summit convened rural leaders, youth, practitioners, and state partners to explore how systems can better support children, youth, and families in rural Northern California. Focusing on listening to the lived experience of youth, aligning state and local efforts, highlighting rural innovations, and inspiring insight to action, this event provided an opportunity to strengthen the connection between policy and practice. This brief captures what we learned, what shifted, and what participants committed to doing next. Download the Brief