MPA Professor Holly Raffle finds reward in community prevention efforts, watching OHIO students advance healthy initiatives

Dr. Holly Raffle came back to Ohio University for what she thought was going to be a year and never left – much to the benefit of community prevention programs and the many students she has mentored over the years.

The year was 1998, and Raffle, who today is a professor teaching courses in the Master of Public Administration program at the George V. Voinovich School of Public Service, had returned to Athens to be closer to her future husband Craig McCarthy, a faculty member who previously led the Bobcat hockey team to three national championships.

After graduating OHIO in 1995 with degrees in Athletic Training and Health Education, Raffle had gone on to earn her MA in Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota when McCarthy asked her to return to southeastern Ohio for a year while he finished his own graduate degree dissertation.

Raffle, a Cincinnati, Ohio native, took a teaching job at Logan High School before returning to OHIO to pursue her PhD in Educational Research and Evaluation.  That move led to a position at the Voinovich School, where she has since been a force for positive change by helping the region build community resilience and prevent substance use disorders, suicide and gambling harm through her leadership of the Partnership for Community-Based Prevention (P4CBP).

“It’s been the longest year of my life,” which has included 25 years of marriage, two children and a longtime connection to Athens, she joked about the couple’s change of plans. “We just made it our home.”

New health career focus

Raffle said she started seeing things from a “systems perspective” during her stint teaching high school health.

“When you’re the health teacher you see a lot of community issues related to physical health and mental health,” she said. That’s when she decided to make a career change from focusing on individuals’ health to a broader perspective.

“I wondered how I could make that change from individual health to population health,” and the answer was to pursue a doctorate at OHIO, she said. Her reconnection to the University led to a post with the Voinovich School’s precursor, the Institute for Local Government Administration and Rural Development.

“That’s when I really saw that I can use my skills to support communities and how they can work on issues that are important to them with training and technical assistance from the university,” Raffle said.

Fast forward to the creation of the Voinovich School, then led by Dean Mark Weinberg, who invited her to apply for a faculty position.

Raffle’s early projects at the University included community needs assessments and work with what is now known as the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health (ODBH), which further refined her career trajectory.

Starting in 2009, Raffle created and began leading P4CBP consisting of Voinovich School faculty, professional staff and student research scholars who partner with a wide range of groups at the national, state and local level to address issues communities face related to behavioral health prevention and promotion.

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The P4CBP serves as a resource for mental health promotion and behavioral health prevention across Ohio. For close to two decades, the partnership has helped direct nearly $30 million in federal, state, and local funding into communities across almost all 88 Ohio counties.

By partnering with key agencies, including SAMHSA, the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health, and HRSA’s Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, the P4CBP champions local efforts to strengthen mental health support, build community resilience and prevent behavioral health disorders. Grounding this work is Raffle’s expertise in systems change, highlighted by her co-authored chapter, "Addressing the Opioid Crisis as a Wicked Problem," written with Dr. Matthew Courser in the American Public Health Association book, “Responding to the Opioid Epidemic: A Guide for Public Health Practitioners.”

P4CBP’s varied initiatives also include a new online Project ECHO program featuring a collaborative learning approach to assist participants in addressing behavioral health in the workplace.

Raffle said she was encouraged to initiate the Partnership by the realization that policy changes don’t become effective with a “magic wand.”

“A lesson I learned early on from my mentors is that policy and community readiness go hand in hand. Whether a community is advocating for a new policy or adapting to one that was just passed, it only creates real, lasting change if people are ready to embrace it,” she said.

Raffle said she saw her charge as: “How do we align community readiness and community need with policy in order to create the healthy Ohio that we all envision for our neighbors and ourselves?”

“So I kind of fell in that niche of supporting communities in the way they want or need to be supported to create the change they’re looking for,” she said. And because she came from a high school teaching background, Raffle said she wanted to include students in the process.

Involving students with prevention efforts

“We like to say that young people are tomorrow’s leaders, but in my eyes, they are leading right now, so I love that the Voinovich School creates space for students to lead and then take that experience with them when they leave OHIO," Raffle said.

As a professor in the MPA program, Raffle also has direct contact with graduate students taking courses in program evaluation and qualitative research.

Raffle is also proud to note that Voinovich Scholars who have worked with P4CBP have gone onto or are planning on a variety of professional careers in health and other fields.

“The best part of my job right now is seeing our students find careers in public service, working to create healthy communities from wherever they are. We have graduates working in problem gambling treatment and prevention, others focused on substance use and/or suicide prevention, and alumni in medicine and law,” she said.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to be part of the Voinovich School, a place where students can learn, both in the classroom and in the field, and then graduate and find their own ways to create healthy communities,” she added.

Raffle said she sees herself as part of a team at the Voinovich School driven by public service.

“It’s an incredible team I have the privilege of leading – it’s important to know that I don’t do any of this work alone,” she said. “We all work together and I am really glad to be a part of it. It’s a humbling place to work.”

A self-described “hockey mom,” Raffle said she runs half marathons and marathons and does CrossFit in her spare time.