Public Health Annual Learning Communities
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Advancing Health Together: Innovation, Communication, & Community at the Core
6th Annual Rural Health Promotion Symposium & 40th Annual Wisconsin Health Education Network (WHEN) Meeting
NCHEC
Expand your professional network and build lasting connections with public health professionals, health educators, community leaders, and clinicians from across the nation. Through two complementary annual meetings, we’ll collaborate on bold, actionable strategies to improve community health in Wisconsin and beyond.
6th ANNUAL
Rural Health Promotion Symposium
October 6, 2026 | 9 a.m.–4 p.m. | A virtual event
Rural Resilience:
Strengthening Assets, Reducing Risks, Improving Health
Wisconsin Rural Health Promotion Annual MeetingThe Rural Health Promotion Symposium will explore the complex factors shaping health and healthcare in rural communities. Participants will examine social connection, loneliness, and isolation, and how rural environments can both support and challenge overall well-being and long-term health outcomes.
Sessions will highlight the strengths and challenges of rural healthcare systems, including workforce development, hospital access, chronic disease prevention, and the impact of state and federal policy on rural communities. Attendees will also learn how Wisconsin AHEC’s statewide partnerships and educational pathways expand hands-on learning opportunities and strengthen the rural health workforce across Wisconsin’s rural and tribal communities.
Through practical, evidence-based strategies, participants will gain tools to improve health in rural settings. Topics include lifestyle medicine, culturally responsive care, advocacy, storytelling, and sustainable approaches to strengthening healthcare access and building healthier, more connected rural communities.
A free public session is included as part of the symposium programming; separate registration is required for the full symposium.
Learning Objectives
As the day progresses, participants will:
- Review the dimensions of social connection, including loneliness and social isolation, and how they are associated with health outcomes.
- Understand the unique ways that rural contexts can support and/or hinder social connection.
- Gain strategies to support social connection in rural places to improve rural health.
- Contrast rural and urban settings in Wisconsin.
- Describe key elements or rurality that support health.
- Synthesize the challenges and assets of rural health and healthcare.
- Describe key components of Wisconsin AHEC’s education and training pathways and how they contribute to increased rural health workforce capacity..
- Explain how AHEC’s statewide network of regional centers and partnerships enhances access to hands-on learning opportunities for students and emerging professionals in rural and tribal communities.
- Apply lessons from Wisconsin AHEC’s model to explore strategies for strengthening rural health workforce development within your own organizations or region.
- Identify key factors driving declines in access to hospital care for rural communities.
- Describe the consequences of rural hospital closures and mergers on health outcomes and affordability of care.
- Discuss current federal and state policies impacting rural hospitals and options for future policies that support access to high-quality care in rural areas.
- Define the six key pillars of lifestyle medicine and the multidimensional nature of holistic health.
- Assess structural barriers and social drivers impacting the health of rural populations in the United States.
- Relate the scale of chronic diseases in rural settings to methods of lifestyle medicine that can prevent and treat chronic disease.
- Learn to apply culturally appropriate, practical lifestyle medicine techniques in rural clinics and communities using sustainable, evidence-based interventions.
- Gain a firm understanding of the Wisconsin State Health Improvement Plan, current priority areas and the process used to identify those areas.
- List the opportunities, challenges, and strategies to advance social connectedness in rural areas.
- Describe the approaches and partnerships needed across fields and sectors to improve connectedness and belonging.
Planning Committee
6th Annual Rural Health Promotion Symposium Planning Committee
- Gary D. Gilmore, M.P.H., Ph.D., MCHES, Chair
- John Eich, B.A., Director, Wisconsin Office of Rural Health
- Jonathan Temte, M.D., Ph.D., M.S., Associate Dean for Public Health and Community Engagement, UW School of Medicine and Public Health
40th ANNUAL
Wisconsin Health Education Network (WHEN) Meeting
October 7, 2026 | 9 a.m.–4 p.m. | A virtual event
Building Comprehensive Narrative Strategy:
Using Shared Values to Move People and Improve Health
WHEN Annual MeetingAs Wisconsin and other communities across the nation are grappling with increased uncertainty and polarization around health-related topics, narrative work teaches us to tap into one of our most valuable resources: our relationships with each other.
Narrative work prioritizes building relationships through finding common ground and identifying shared values. Despite differences in opinion we may have with others, we have an opportunity to leverage our shared values and collectively move our work forward.
Participants will learn how narrative can influence public opinion, health, and policy and how it can be used as a tool to move people to act. During breakout sessions, participants will collaborate, exchange ideas, and practice strategies to combine narrative with advocacy, data, and storytelling to strengthen their existing programs and build new, winning campaigns and interventions. Finally, participants will be taught the Theory of Change model, which organizations can apply to their own initiatives, creating clear pathways to change and comprehensive action plans. Participants will depart the meeting with their own plans of action.
Learning Objectives
Participants will:
Planning Committee
40th Annual WHEN Meeting Planning Committee
- Gary D. Gilmore, M.P.H., Ph.D., MCHES, Chair
- Christa Cupp, M.P.H., MCHES
- Sheri Seimers, M.P.H., CHES
- Catherine Sendelbach, M.S., CHES
Sponsored by:
UWL Public Health & Community Health, UWL Graduate & Extended Learning logo
Cooperating sponsors:
Overall host & moderator for both programs: Gary D. Gilmore, M.P.H., Ph.D., MCHES, 608.785.8163 or ggilmore@uwlax.edu.
For questions regarding registration: Graduate & Extended Learning, 608.785.6500 or ex@uwlax.edu.
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