Altarum provides research, advisory, communications, and technology services to federal agencies, state governments, public health organizations, and health care providers. We apply a human-centered design approach that starts with expert data science and research skills to evaluate needs, design solutions, and implement change with measurable frameworks and feedback loops.
Training and Technical Assistance
Altarum provides training and technical assistance to federal agencies, states, territories, Tribal organizations, and community partners facing shifting federal requirements, a tight workforce, and complex program environments. We offer direct organizational support, peer learning, and policy translation, and we lead national centers such as the Crisis Systems Response Training and Technical Assistance Center (CSR-TTAC). Our goal is lasting capacity: we embed in the work, learn the context, and stay until the changes hold.
Through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program, Altarum helped small practices navigate value-based reimbursement in seven Midwestern states. Over five years, we engaged 31,664 health care providers across 16,640 practices and earned a 99% satisfaction rate.
Program Evaluation & Applied Research
For more than three decades, Altarum has helped state, federal, and nonprofit partners understand how public programs work and how to make them work better for the people they serve. Our researchers, statisticians, dietitians, behavioral scientists, public health analysts, and economists design mixed-methods studies across the full life cycle, from formative research and process and outcome evaluation to impact and return on investment (ROI) analysis. We embed evaluation in every engagement so partners generate evidence they can use and build the capacity to act on it.
As external evaluator for Illinois Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), Altarum evaluated the Eat.Move.Save campaign and built an economic model of the program's value. The analysis estimated that Illinois SNAP-Ed averted 586 cases of food insecurity and 5,056 cases of obesity in a year, generating a total societal value of between $76.0 million and $135.4 million.
Data Interoperability & Technology
Altarum helps state and local health departments, federal agencies, and national standards bodies build the data infrastructure public health depends on. We implement Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) solutions, HL7 standards, and integration engines; build custom public health software as a nonprofit, mission-driven partner; and develop statewide and national registries for disease surveillance and longitudinal studies. Our onboarding and knowledge transfer work helps agencies run their own data systems and close the gaps that slow data-driven decisions.
For the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services' Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, Altarum created two new data reporting routes and a Data Quality Tool to improve the speed and accuracy of lead surveillance. As of mid-November 2022, 43 sites were onboarded and another 49 were in production.
Health Engagement & Outreach
Through Palladian Partners, a wholly owned subsidiary, Altarum helps federal health and science agencies connect people to the information, programs, and services that improve health. Since 1996, Palladian has provided audience research and strategy, science translation, outreach and behavior change programs, digital and editorial services, and conference services to clients including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDC, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Programs grounded in evidence and audience insight move people from awareness to action, and the playbooks and message frameworks we build stay with the agency.
Palladian's outreach strategies have helped the National Institute on Aging (NIA) consistently engage new entrepreneurs across its Small Business Programs, which provide about $150 million in grants annually for aging-related research and development. For NIH's All of Us Research Program, a national effort to enroll 1 million people in precision medicine research, Palladian has provided outreach, engagement, and program support since 2016.
Data & AI Center of Excellence
Altarum's Health Data & AI Center of Excellence helps public health agencies adopt AI responsibly. We deliver solutions for early warning and decision intelligence, operational efficiency and data quality, AI-augmented workforce support, and benefits and care navigation, built on privacy-first, HIPAA-compliant design with human review. Public health agencies are under unprecedented pressure from fragmented data, workforce shortages, and manual processes; responsible AI can help them do more with the resources they have.
Agencies can start with an advisory readiness assessment, test one high-value use case in a focused 4-to-6-week pilot, or move to full enterprise delivery.