From Community Engagement to Community Governance:
Co-Design in Practice
Public health is navigating a period of real strain, including contested funding, eroding trust, and growing pressure to prove relevance. But moments of disruption are also opportunities to redefine the role of public health.
This session introduces co-design as one possible response: a structural approach that treats lived experience as governance, not just input, redistributing authority across problem framing, solution development, and implementation. The session walks through the co-design sequencing model (scoping, proactive recruitment, equitable design cycles, and ongoing governance), anchored in a real LGBTQIA+ healthcare access project and told through the experiences of a community co-designer and a public health official from Olmsted County.
Participants will leave with a clear-eyed view of how co-design strengthens the equity work already underway and points toward a more durable role for public health.
Special Offer: Not an MPHA member yet?
All non-member attendees will receive a 20% discount on an MPHA membership if they sign up after the event!
Presenters
Jess Roberts is the founder and lead co-design facilitator at ByDesign LLC, where he partners with health systems, public agencies, educational institutions, and governing bodies to redesign how decisions are made, and by whom. Trained as an architect, he approaches persistent gaps in health, education, and civic participation as design failures: the predictable result of systems built without the people most affected by them. Mr. Roberts is also an affiliate researcher at the Minnesota Design Center, and adjunct faculty at the School of Public Health, University of Minnesota.
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Holly Jones is a results-driven program and project management professional with over two decades of experience leading complex initiatives across public health, research, and administrative sectors. Known for her strategic mindset and collaborative leadership, Holly has consistently delivered measurable outcomes while fostering cultures of continuous improvement and data-informed decision-making.
Currently serving as the Performance Management, Quality Improvement, and Accreditation Manager for Olmsted County Public Health, Holly leads department-wide efforts to implement performance systems grounded in the Results-Based Accountability model. She oversees public health accreditation, quality improvement initiatives, and community health planning, ensuring alignment with national standards and advancing health equity.
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Atreya Madrone (he/they) was born on the Wahpeton tribe’s lands in what is now called Rochester at the Mayo Clinic. As one of the original co-designers of the LGBTQIA+ health access co-design project, they are excited to be contributing to the work happening to make healthcare better for queer and trans people in their hometown. Atreya now lives in so-called Canada and works as an academic librarian.