Austin Population Health Conference Draws 400

• Can we reconcile politics and population health?
• What can we do at the state and local level to address population health issues?
• How can you create effective interdisciplinary homes for population health research?

These are some of the questions that population health scientists and stakeholders debated at the third annual population health conference funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Improving Population Health: Now, Across People’s Lives, and Across Generations to Come convened October 2-4 at the University of Texas at Austin, and by all accounts it was a resounding success.

Memorable moments included:

• Thoughtful plenary panels addressing urban health, the opioid crisis, and early development
• A poster session featuring great one-on-one discussions about population health research (see Jennifer Ailshire’s blog and read about Poster Award winners here)
• A reception hosted by the Department of Population Health at Dell Medical School and the Population Research Center, both at the University of Texas at Austin
• Great discussions at Professional Development Roundtables organized by Steph Robert and Lorna Thorpe
• A host of sessions featuring interdisciplinary population health science
• Seamlessly overcoming a power outage on the second day of the conference
• The very first IAPHS Membership Meeting – read the minutes here.

See more highlights and a slideshow from the conference.

Many thanks to the Planning Committee!  The members include co-chairs Dorothy Daley (University of Kansas) and Michelle Frisco (Penn State University), Lorna Thorpe (New York University School of Medicine), Dawn Alley (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), Jenn Beam Dowd (Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London), Carolyn Cannuscio (University of Pennsylvania), Merlin Chowkwanyun (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health), Mark Hayward (University of Texas at Austin), and Justin Denney (Washington State University).  Thanks also to the volunteers who staffed the IAPHS table and all those who contributed to the active IAPHS communications effort during the meeting.  See the long list of everyone who contributed here.