Provost IMPACT Award: Turning data into prevention, advancing rural health

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 29, 2025) — Last fall, the University of Kentucky Office of the Provost announced the second cohort of the Institutional Multidisciplinary Paradigm to Accelerate Collaboration and Transformation (IMPACT) Awards winners. 

The IMPACT Awards initiative, an internal funding program from the Office of the Provost, launched in 2023 to support innovation and transformation within UK’s colleges. The awards recognize the groundbreaking work conducted by faculty and staff across campus, and they create opportunities for transdisciplinary collaboration to occur between UK community members to help the university’s mission of advancing Kentucky.

Fifteen colleges, including UK Libraries and the Graduate School, are working collectively to break new ground on ways to advance Kentucky.

This spring, UKNow is highlighting the 2024-25 IMPACT Award projects and the faculty who are leading them. Today, we learn more about the project titled “UK King’s Daughters and UK College of Public Health Precision Public Health Alliance.”

Using precision analytics approaches with population health data helps identify localized patterns of social determinants and comorbidities, supporting the design of tailored interventions. UK College of Public Health (CPH) and UK King’s Daughters (UKKD) have partnered to create a Precision Public Health Alliance (PPHA) applying precision analytics to UKKD electronic health records (EHR) and secondary county-level datasets to map quality indicators by social, demographic and clinical comorbidity factors. Since integrating its EPIC EHR system in 2008, UKKD has collected longitudinal health data on a stable, mostly rural population in northeastern Kentucky. In addition to UKKD and UK CPH clinicians and researchers, PPHA includes a community-based Action Team of local social services, behavioral health and public health agencies and Cooperative Extension agents.

In Fall 2024, UKKD and UK CPH developed a statistical analysis plan to examine the interplay of social, geographic and clinical factors associated with a UKKD priority area: increasing colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates. On March 13 the Action Team received findings from this analysis of EHR and secondary county-level data and summary of UKKD’s existing quality improvement efforts related to CRC screening. The first meeting of the Action Team demonstrated initial proof-of-concept that PPHA approaches can catalyze community-based practice improvements. Immediately after the meeting with UK CPH support, the local health department and community mental health center pursued adoption of UKKD stool-based screening strategies and UKKD created a simple workflow for receiving referrals from community-based partners.

The IMPACT team includes Margaret McGladrey, Mary (Beth) Lacy, Kristen McQuerry, Svetla Slavova, Rachel Hogg-Graham, Emily Clear, Kory Heier, Caitlin Phan, Thomas Ard and Megan Hall — from CPH; Charbel Salem, Ryan Parker, Mindy Keeton and Jennifer Sword — from UKKD; and Bryan Martin and Morgan Meuth with UK HealthCare.

UKNow caught up with Margaret McGladrey, team lead and assistant professor in CPH, to learn more about the project. Learn more in the Q&A session below.

How has the IMPACT award inspired innovation at UK with your research?

Capitalizing on the incorporation of UKKD into the UK HealthCare system, the IMPACT award has catalyzed exciting clinical-community connections among researchers, health care providers and community-based health and social services organizations. Population-level insights from UKKD EHR and secondary data combined with clinical leadership briefings on CRC-related quality improvement efforts have mobilized partners from the neighborhood social services mall, local public health departments and Pathways Inc., the community mental health center serving northeastern Kentucky, to collaborate on quick wins to connect CRC screening and workflows. The IMPACT award has allowed our team to develop not only technical processes and statistical plans for accessing and interpreting UKKD EHR data but also partnerships with community-based organizations empowered to take action to improve access to prevention services based on our population health analyses.

How did you decide on this particular topic or research area?

In community-based research, partners drive selection of research topics. In this case, UKKD’s Chief Medical Information and Innovation Officer, Charbel Salem, M.D., brought his vision for population health analytics to the UKCPH team, who came alongside with expertise in biostatistical, epidemiological and health systems research and community-based organization partnerships from previous studies to help realize UKKD’s goals. UKKD clinical leadership selected CRC screening as an area of initial focus to prototype the PPHA approach we can now use to assess and address other population health priorities, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and behavioral health.

What positive impact will your research have on Kentucky and beyond?

Based on EHR data, the first Action Team meeting resulted in partners’ prioritization of increasing CRC screening using noninvasive stool testing among younger eligible Medicaid beneficiaries (aged 45-55) for whom the prep time required for colonoscopy may not be acceptable due to social drivers like transportation access and time off work. Pathways and the Greenup County Health Department have already pursued and begun implementing coordinated CRC screening referral workflows with UKKD. As a pilot project, the PPHA provides both a model and a method for community-clinical analysis-to-action cycles that can be replicated in any health care system using EHR.

What comes next for your research?

Our next topics for analysis are geographic, social and clinical factors associated with diabetes and hypertension population quality indicators, with an Action Team meeting in Ashland including local extension agents scheduled for May 13. Dissemination of findings is underway through conference presentations and a manuscript invited to a special issue of “Frontiers in Public Health” on community engagement models and effectiveness.