National Public Health Week 2024 will celebrate the role of collaboration, cooperation and partnerships in improving public health.
NPHW will bring together public health workers, students, organizations and communities around the theme of “Protecting, Connecting and Thriving: We Are All Public Health.”
“This year’s NPHW theme really allows for every aspect of public health to shine. It also gives a great framework for building partnerships and fostering connections locally and across the country,” Lindsey Wahowiak, APHA’s director of Affiliate affairs, told The Nation’s Health.
Each day of NPHW, to be held April 1-7, will spotlight a daily topic related to the theme. Organizers can build activities and outreach around the daily topics.
Monday will focus on civic engagement; Tuesday, healthy neighborhoods; Wednesday, climate change; Thursday, new tools and innovations; Friday, reproductive and sexual health; Saturday, emergency preparedness; and Sunday, the future of public health.
“We’re excited to see how communities and organizations put their own spin on each of the daily topics,” Wahowiak said.
APHA’s NPHW 2024 toolkit is available at the end of this month. Organizers can offer an exercise class, lead a community clean-up or host a health panel, for example. Fact sheets and shareables help organizers explore approaches to daily topics. A free step-by-step timeline can help organizers begin planning their events now.
Everyone is encouraged to join APHA’s Keep It Moving Challenge, which motivates people to become and stay more active in the months leading up to NPHW. Participants can join and create teams to help them stay on track.
Last year, over 150 NPHW events were held nationwide during NPHW. APHA’s member groups hosted a myriad of events. Several APHA Sections and the Council of Affiliates organized a webinar to address how to build trust in public health. Speakers drew on lessons from COVID-19 prevention, social work, public health advocacy and other disciplines.
“Our content provided an opportunity to show how our professionals build trust every day — and how trust, and building trustworthiness, needs to be part of our guiding values moving forward,” Andrea Lowe, MPH, APHA Ethics Section chair, told The Nation’s Health.
APHA state and local affiliated public health associations were also active during NPHW. The Connecticut Public Health Association focused on connecting members to state, regional and national resources relevant to each day’s topic.
“At a time when there are so many things vying for our attention, having a week dedicated to public health gives us the opportunity to refocus on our field,” CPHA President Elizabeth Schwartz told The Nation’s Health.
For more information on NPHW 2024, visit www.nphw.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
