Holly Wood serves as Senior Director for Purdue University’s Center for Community Health Empowerment and Learning (HEAL) and Health Empowerment Initiatives. Her work sits at the intersection of translational and implementation science, healthcare, public health, and community engagement, with a focus on moving evidence, innovation, and promising ideas into practice.

In her role at Purdue, Holly leads the development and implementation of complex initiatives involving university faculty, healthcare organizations, government agencies, funders, and community partners. She specializes in translating research and innovation into practical approaches that can be implemented in real-world settings. Her work includes developing implementation strategies, building cross-sector partnerships, aligning resources, identifying and addressing implementation barriers, and creating the infrastructure needed to move initiatives from concept to sustained practice.

A central focus of Holly’s work is understanding how interventions and innovations function once they encounter the realities of organizations and communities. Drawing on implementation and translational science, she works with partners to adapt evidence-based and emerging approaches to local context while maintaining the elements necessary to achieve their intended purpose. Her work includes the implementation of new models of care, including consideration of workflow integration, organizational readiness, stakeholder engagement, adoption, and sustainability.

Holly is particularly interested in using nontraditional partnerships to expand access to health services, information, and education. Her work brings together partners that may not traditionally operate within the same systems, including healthcare, public health, higher education, community organizations, businesses, and other trusted community institutions, to reach people in the places where they live, work, and interact. She approaches partnership development as an implementation strategy, identifying existing community assets and trusted relationships that can help extend the reach of health initiatives beyond traditional settings.

Her portfolio spans rural health, healthcare access, public health infrastructure, workforce development, community engagement, and the implementation of new approaches to care. Across this work, she often serves as a bridge between researchers, clinicians, organizational leaders, public health practitioners, and communities, helping translate different priorities and forms of expertise into actionable implementation strategies.

Holly brings experience across local and state public health, academia, healthcare, and community-based organizations. Prior to joining Purdue, she held leadership and subject-matter expert roles with the Indiana Department of Health and in local public health, where she led statewide and community-level initiatives involving infant mortality prevention, emergency preparedness, trauma-informed systems, and cross-sector collaboration.

Holly is a PhD candidate in Public Health at Purdue University. Her research applies implementation science to examine how community-based health interventions are adopted, adapted, and sustained in practice, with particular attention to organizational context, partnerships, staffing, and implementation processes. Her research and applied leadership share a common focus: reducing the gap between what evidence suggests should work and what organizations and communities can successfully implement in practice.

Contact Information

• (765) 496-9663
• hawood@purdue.edu