The Center for Innovation in Population Health (IPH Center), established in 2019, is one of several research centers based in the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health.
Shortened to IPH (pronounced ‘IF’) Center, as in…
IPH-C's Mission
The IPH Center’s primary work is to support clinical and workforce innovations using the Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management (TCOM) conceptual framework. TCOM begins with the implementation of a collaborative assessment process, which identifies a shared understanding of why the person and/or family needs care and seeks to understand the unique components of their circumstances.
Dr. John Lyons, IPH Center’s inaugural Director, states "Our mission is to engineer person-centered care through TCOM, which focuses on personal change, collaboration, and people’s stories to drive systems transformation."
“It’s important that people feel like they’re at the center of their own care,” says Dr. April Fernando, an Associate Director of the IPH Center. Fernando further explains that person-centered care reminds everybody, the individual receiving care, and the provider, that they need to work together to make sure the focus is on the service of the individual. This helps with their engagement, feel more satisfied with their care, and improve their clinical outcomes.
Public Health Impact
For use in child-serving systems, the IPH Center Team trains and implements jurisdictions on the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS). The CANS supports a consensus-based decision-making approach to understand the complex circumstances of children and families seeking care.
Currently about 80% of all children and youth served in child welfare or public behavioral health participate in the CANS approach, which is the most widely used approach. The CANS tracks changes in the child and family’s circumstances over time throughout their time in the care system.
Since its development in 2004 by Dr. John Lyons, the TCOM framework has helped over 10 million people worldwide. More than 120,000 professionals train and certify in person centered assessment approaches on a distance learning platform managed by IPH Center staff. TCOM implementations can be found on every continent in the world, except Antarctica.
The IPH Center has created a Child Welfare Collaborative, which consists of 10 child welfare agencies across the US that have integrated the TCOM approach and use the CANS and Family Advocacy and Support Tool (FAST) in their social work practice.
Partnerships and Collaborations
The IPH Center also hosts a collaborative of 17 Universities around the United States which support TCOM implementation. The goal of the TCOM University Partnership is to cultivate the development of the field of TCOM work in universities and support the partners in collaboration and shared learning.
The Safe Systems team of the IPH Center leads the technical assistance efforts for the National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS). NPCS is a national quality improvement collaborative to improve child safety through the application of safety science and shared data.
Dr. Michael Cull, Associate Director of the IPH Center and Safe Systems team member, explains that NPCS leverages the learning from other safety critical settings (e.g., hospitals, aviation, highways) to the child welfare systems. NPCS currently brings together 26 jurisdictions nationally with a shared goal of strengthening families, promoting innovations, and a public health response to reducing and preventing child maltreatment and fatalities.
The IPH Center provides person-centered analytical support and translational science to state and local governments and other organizations invested in improving health outcomes for youth and families.
In 2020, the IPH Center initiated a project to curate data from around the United States and beyond of jurisdictions using person-centered assessments within the TCOM framework. This project, titled ‘TCOM Data Reservoir,’ is aimed to improve systems of care using de-identified data.
The collaborative within this project, the Data Governance Committee, are partners who share the data to address important policy and practice questions. Overall, the goal is to create applied, collaborative, useful research that is easily communicated to all.
About IPH-C
The IPH Center continues to find innovative approaches to the public health space. In 2021, the Center was featured as a Thought Leader at the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting & Expo. APHA Thought Leaders are recognized as public health servants, researchers, and program leaders that are at the forefront of providing successful interventions, initiatives, and programs.
The IPH Center builds on their work of person-centered care and safety science, developing a set of evidence-based tools to both support comprehensive consensus-based assessments, and shift workplace cultures to focus on collaboration as a mechanism of accountability.
Learn more at iph.uky.edu.
The University of Kentucky College of Public Health is undergoing a review by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) for re-accreditation. Part of this process includes the invitation to provide third-party comments. Anyone, including students, alumni, employers, community partners, etc., is allowed to share relevant information about the college directly with CEPH. If you would like to provide input to CEPH to inform their review, send your comments to submissions@ceph.org by May 4th, 2025.
