Holly Wood serves as Senior Director for the Center for Community Health Empowerment and Learning (HEAL) and is a core member of Purdue’s Health Empowerment Initiatives leadership team, led by Executive Director Dr. Jerome Adams. In this role, she works to bring community voices back to campus while amplifying them nationally through Dr. Adams’ framework. Holly engages faculty in health-focused projects, drives collaborative funding proposals, leads a team that curates and disseminates public health data to inform research, and fosters cross-campus partnerships that connect academic expertise with community needs.

Holly’s commitment to community health began early in her career through public health service in rural Indiana, where she developed disaster preparedness and surge-capacity plans, including pandemic readiness strategies. She successfully directed annual multi-county training exercises in partnership with the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH), and following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, she supported several counties in strengthening local policy and practice.

In her roles in both the IDOH Divisions of Maternal and Child Health and Fatality Review and Prevention, she led the shift from a centralized, statewide strategy to a localized, community-driven approachthrough the creation of Community Action Teams and advocated for resource allocation that prioritized areas of greatest need.

Immediately prior to joining Purdue, Holly led state efforts to address secondary childhood trauma by advancing the Handle with Care model, which creates a feedback loop between first responders and schools to ensure children who experience potentially traumatic events receive understanding and support during the school day. She continues to collaborate with state and local partners on trauma-informed, resilience-focused strategies that strengthen Indiana communities.

Holly earned her B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Criminology from Indiana State University (2005). She is a PhD candidate in Public Health at Purdue University. Her research focuses on increasing access to care through innovative health integration models. She has expertise in operationalizing the socio-ecological framework and applying it across areas such as mental health, substance use, and maternal and infant health.

Contact Information

• (765) 496-9663
• hawood@purdue.edu