Roanoke center gaining recognition for community-focused work

In a new piece published by The New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Liz Ackley broached a question that has been central to her work at Roanoke College: 
 
How can researchers get better data and make a bigger impact on helping people lead healthy, happy lives? 
 
For Ackley, director of Roanoke College’s Center for Community Health Innovation, the answer was found in the same place that she always looks for guidance — her community. Specifically, it came about through a partnership with K-12 schools, which she argued in her article are an underutilized resource when it comes to identifying and measuring community need, particularly in diverse, underserved areas. 
 
The center’s partnership, which results in an extensive, triennial survey of city families, “demonstrates how school systems can serve as powerful data partners to enhance representation of marginalized communities in local data sets, better equipping communities to catalyze equity-focused development,” Ackley wrote.  
 
“By integrating family perspectives with objective health metrics, this model fills critical gaps in traditional surveillance and drives structural change by means of actionable insights supporting policy and investment strategies,” she continued.

Related: Center for Community Health Innovation releases new report on children’s health

Data-driven, community-led change is at the heart of the ethos embraced by the Center for Community Health Innovation. In 2024, its work led to the opening of Melrose Plaza, an affordable grocery store and resource hub that the Melrose neighborhood in Roanoke City had been seeking for years. 
 
The center’s team, comprised of Roanoke College students training in real-world field work, surveyed Melrose residents, listened to their priorities and built an evidence-based case for a neighborhood grocery store. That advocacy was cited as instrumental to forming a coalition of nonprofits, businesses and government leaders who ultimately made Melrose Plaza a reality.

Related: Community grocery store opens in project championed by Roanoke professor, center

The project has since been highlighted as a powerful example of community partnerships in action. Last month, Ackley was asked to present the project as a replicable national model at the 2026 Council on Black Health convening, which brought together an invited slate of researchers, public health experts, and community leaders from across the country to establish an action plan to advance Black health. 
 
Melrose Plaza was also part of a recent front-page article in The Roanoke Times about grocery store disparities and efforts to fix them. And the project’s success helped inform a recent national report on community collaboration from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Reinvestment Fund. 
 
Now the new piece just published in The New England Journal of Medicine once again puts the center’s work on a prominent stage. Ackley, a professor of health and exercise science, was invited to write the article for the publication’s "Efforts toward Equity" series. The New England Journal of Medicine is a leading medical journal with a worldwide readership.