FARMINGTON – Heather Davis has been selected to receive a scholarship from the Society for Public Health Education to participate in the first SOPHE State Health Policy Institute.

Davis serves as executive director of the Healthy Community Coalition, based in Farmington, an affiliate of Franklin Community Health Network. The coalition is one of Maine’s first healthy community coalitions and has developed into a role model program.

Davis was one of 20 members selected to participate in the institute.

The 20 awardees represent states from Maine to California, Minnesota to Louisiana, and 16 states in between.

Participants will receive intensive training and education at the institute, to be held May 6 before SOPHE’s mid-year scientific meeting in New Orleans.

Following their training, the state health promotion policy experts will begin developing and implementing plans to address one or two major chronic disease problems by joining with state and local coalitions and community members.

Training will help them understand critical nuances in state and local policy change; work with media more effectively; identify sources of state and local chronic disease data; identify social determinants of health; and how to access the latest research on systems changes to support healthy lifestyles.

The new initiative is part of a broader SOPHE effort, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to make more evidence-based information about chronic disease available to policymakers and other key opinion leaders.

For more information, visit www.sophe.org.