C6.01 - Oral Session: From Local Roots to National Impact: Scaling Community Driven Health Communication

Brief Abstract Summary: Learn how a rural innovation for public health messaging evolved into a statewide infrastructure with national reach—while preserving community voice. This session will share lessons from WNC Health Network’s collaborative journey with Arclet, a platform co-designed with local communicators and enhanced with an ethical AI assistant, Arli. Participants will gain practical insights into how human-centered design, cross-sector partnerships, and responsible AI can strengthen local relevance, accelerate messaging workflows, and build trust in diverse communities.

Detailed abstract description: Public health communication often struggles to keep pace with urgent health challenges, especially in rural and under-resourced settings. WNC Health Network began by addressing this gap at the local level—coordinating shared campaigns and elevating community voices in Western North Carolina. Those grassroots solutions inspired the creation of Arclet, a platform designed to help health departments and community-based organizations find, adapt, and share culturally relevant, evidence-based messages.
Through partnership between WNC Health Network and Arclet, the platform evolved from spreadsheets and shared folders into a statewide infrastructure for health communication. Supported by the CDC’s Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) and other funders, North Carolina’s rollout in 2025–2026 is strengthening foundational communication capacity across local and state agencies.
A key innovation is the integration of Arclet’s AI-assisted co-pilot, Arli, which was co-developed with health communicators in rural and urban communities. Rather than replacing human expertise, Arli supports communicators by suggesting locally appropriate language, improving clarity, and streamlining workflows—while keeping final editorial control in human hands. Early testing found that 87.5% of participants rated Arli’s feedback as effective, and 75% as locally relevant.
This session will explore how a local, equity-focused initiative scaled “from the mountains to the map” and how human-first, AI-assisted design can accelerate impact without eroding trust. By sharing practical examples from rural pilots to statewide expansion, it will highlight the power of pairing local insight with innovative technology to transform communication capacity.