Spotlight | CivicHealthAlliance

Civic Health Spotlight

The Civic Health Spotlights highlight the stories of everyday heroes who are bringing civic engagement into their healthcare settings and communities. We hope you see yourself in these stories and know there’s so much you can do in your own community. Please reach out to us if you’d like to nominate a civic health hero for us to chat with at info@civichealthalliance.com.

Mentorship as Civic Practice: Ashleigh McKenna’s Vision for Youth Engagement

When Ashleigh McKenna talks about civic engagement, her eyes light up with the spirit of someone who has practiced this work for a lifetime. Yet McKenna, now chief of staff at the Gen-Z-led nonprofit New Voters , will tell you that her entry into civic engagement was relatively recent. “It was very serendipitous,” she reflects. But even long before McKenna stepped into this role, she had been practicing service in smaller, subtler ways. At just 15 years old, she began volunte

Feb 115 min read

Educator, Researcher, Evaluator: Dr. Ja’Dell Davis Reads the World, Then Changes It

When Ja’Dell Davis, Ph.D., was still a budding sociologist, she took to heart three powerful words she’d read from her academic mentor: “Read the world.” Now a researcher and evaluator at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER, University of Wisconsin–Madison), Davis has built her career around this very practice. But in fact, this keen perception was a skill she’d been sharpening since childhood, forged through the experiences of a Black family navigating spaces t

Dec 16, 20255 min read

From Cancer to Congress: Laura Packard’s Fight for Healthcare

When Laura Packard first joined the fight for affordable, accessible healthcare, she never expected she’d end up in the trenches herself, speaking out for her own survival. But that’s exactly what happened. Seven years after the award-winning communications strategist had led an Arkansas campaign pushing Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA), that same law “came around and saved my life,” Packard says. The ACA, a landmark healthcare reform law designed to expand ins

Oct 13, 20255 min read