Expanding Applicability of Presentations at Public Health Conferences

Abstract

As public health practitioners and program evaluators for a state health department, we look forward to public health conferences for the opportunity to hear from leaders in the field and inform our own practice. While we feel that most presentations describe the work and why it matters, many of us leave sessions thinking, “Now what?” In other words, how do we apply what we learned to public health practice? As American Public Health Association (APHA) looks to celebrate its 150th year in 2022, now is an ideal time to focus on expanding the impact of our work. We offer several suggestions for how conference presenters can make their work more applicable to public health practitioners. We ground our recommendations in John Driscoll’s reflective model for health care practitioners. This framework guides the audience through three questions designed to move from a description of what happened (“what?”) to the potential significance of their findings (“so what?”) and finally to the actions we can take as a result (“now what?”). These strategies are meant to help presenters describe processes and implications in addition to outcomes and theory. We hope that public health professionals can continue to look to the APHA Annual Meeting and other public health conferences as not only sources of innovative research but also as forums for practitioners to share the practical applications of their work.