By: Summer Bowman 

As the first university in the United States to adopt the Okanagan Charter and earn recognition as a Health Promoting University (HPU), the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is committed to promoting health and well-being across its campus and in surrounding communities. At its core, the Okanagan Charter is a commitment to embed health into all aspects of campus culture and to lead health promotion action and collaboration locally and globally.

Live HealthSmart Alabama, one of UAB’s many initiatives that contribute to its designation as an HPU, aims to make good health simple for all Alabamians by improving access to good nutrition, physical activity, prevention and wellness, and education. As such, Live HealthSmart Alabama partners with schools across UAB to promote these key health and wellness goals and the overall HPU mission.

Among Live HealthSmart Alabama’s partners stands UAB’s Collat School of Business. Several Collat professors have embraced Live HealthSmart Alabama’s mission, offering students real-world application opportunities in their courses. These courses include Dr. John Martin’s Capstone Course in Strategic Management, Operations and Supply Chain Management with Dr. Phillip Musa, Healthcare Marketing with Professor Gavin Hayden, and Accounting and Finance for Managers with Dr. Jim Byrd.

Additionally, Dr. Stephanie Yates, through her position as the Regions Institute for Financial Education Endowed Professor and chair of the Collat School of Business’ Accounting and Finance Department, further supports Live HealthSmart Alabama by providing financial education and support, and by hosting a seminar for participants in Live HealthSmart Alabama’s Community Leadership Academy.

Early Partnership with Collat

The Collat School of Business has been an important part of Live HealthSmart Alabama’s involvement on campus since the outset. Dr. Yates and former Collat School of Business Dean Eric Jack, PhD, were early supporters of Live HealthSmart Alabama, promoting financial education and providing support. Through programs like Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA), Dr. Yates and her team have provided free tax preparation, budgeting workshops, and first-time home-ownership classes.

The relationship with Dr. Yates paved the way for more collaboration across the school, including a partnership with Dr. Martin, whose strategic management expertise contributed to the progress and success of Live HealthSmart Alabama’s Bush Hills community project.

Collaborative Initiatives in Action

Capstone Course in Strategic Management

Designed for students in the final term of their Master of Business Administration (MBA) program, Dr. Martin’s Strategic Management course integrates various business disciplines through the study of business policy and strategy. In partnering with Live HealthSmart Alabama, Dr. Martin offered his students a chance to apply their knowledge to a real-world scenario: The Bush Hills Connections Complex.

One of Live HealthSmart Alabama’s focus areas is working to improve the built environments of four under-resourced Birmingham communities—Kingston, Titusville, East Lake, and Bush Hills—which addresses a neighborhood's infrastructure. In Bush Hills, these improvements included installing and repairing sidewalks, crosswalks and ADA ramps, planting trees, and adding street lighting. Most importantly, it included the creation of the Bush Hills Connections Complex, which was made possible by a partnership with B.L. Harbert, Inc. whose philanthropic mission is to leave communities better than they found them.

The complex features a fully renovated kitchen, theatre, gym, community meeting space, and community garden, among other things. With the new center came the challenge of developing pricing models for its space rental offerings and structuring a budget to maintain the space.

“Bush Hills Connections Complex is not a typical business, it’s a neighborhood supported non-profit. We had to think outside of the box when it came to things like security costs, utilities, and how to protect the environment,” said Dr. Martin. “In this class, we had two broad tasks: creating a strategic financial plan and budgeting the community use of the space.”

Students of Dr. Martin’s class were separated into two groups, one focused on strategic financial planning and the other on community space utilization. These groups spent the semester working alongside Live HealthSmart Alabama to develop a strategic plan for the Bush Hills community leaders to implement and help maintain the new center.

“A strategic plan is a roadmap, a communication tool. Strategic planning doesn’t have to be difficult, but it has to ask the right questions and have the right people involved to solve for a real problem,” said Live HealthSmart Alabama Chief Administrative Officer, Teresa Shufflebarger. “Our goal was to ensure the sustainability of Bush Hills' new complex, by developing a clear roadmap for success.”

At the conclusion of the course, recent MBA graduates Arema Granger and Alp Turgut were able to present the strategic plan on behalf of their class to key stakeholders of the Bush Hills community, Live HealthSmart Alabama, and UAB. Their plans provided a comprehensive blueprint for success, that can be implemented for years to come.

The success of Dr. Martin's class emphasizes the power of collaboration between universities and community initiatives. As students engage with real-world problems, they not only gain practical skills but also develop a deeper understanding of the impact their expertise can have. Beyond Dr. Martin's class, other courses within the Collat School of Business use Live HealthSmart Alabama’s mission and programs to enrich student learning experiences.

Financial and Managerial Accounting

The Accounting and Finance for Managers course, taught by Dr. Byrd, teaches students how to analyze the financial aspects of business, including items like budget development and financial analysis. This semester, instead of big companies like Delta or Walmart, students also had the option to choose the Bush Hills Connections Complex as one of their case studies. Three students picked Live HealthSmart Alabama after hearing a presentation about the initiative by Shufflebarger. This decision allowed students to support their community and make a difference in people's lives, all while working toward their degree.

In this class, students had the opportunity to apply financial accounting concepts to managerial tasks. Those who opted for Live HealthSmart Alabama expanded on the previous semester's strategy by creating a "strategy map" tailored for Bush Hills managers. Utilizing this map, the students developed a balanced scorecard for monitoring key performance indicators and crafted a budget aligned with the strategic plan.

The connection between finance and business strategy is expanded upon in Dr. Musa’s operations and supply chain management course, where students learn about operational efficiency.

Operations and Supply Chain Management

In Dr. Musa's Operations and Supply Chain Management course, students gain a comprehensive understanding of managing operations in service and manufacturing organizations. As part of the curriculum, students must identify and improve a process they are passionate about or that occurs in their own lives. One notable project involved streamlining the scheduling process for Live HealthSmart Alabama’s Mobile Market and Mobile Wellness programs. By proposing a new system that allows for real-time schedule changes to be made online, the student improved efficiency and eliminated the need for intermediaries. This approach also ensures the community has timely access to the most up-to-date information while simultaneously addressing accessibility concerns by providing downloadable PDFs that can be printed for those without access to reliable internet. The results of this project have the potential to expand the community’s awareness of nutritious food options and preventive health services across Alabama.

Another method for expanding the reach and accessibility of Live HealthSmart Alabama’s programs is to build capacity for local leaders. To do this, the Community Leadership Academy was established.

The Community Leadership Academy

Live HealthSmart Alabama’s Community Leadership Academy, established with a generous grant from Coca Cola United, is designed to equip its participants with the knowledge and skills needed to become effective and active leaders in their communities. Part of the program’s curriculum included a Saturday seminar on financial literacy. The seminar, led by Dr. Yates at the Collat School of Business, presented concepts of budgeting, taxes, and home ownership. An impactful session for the participants, this hands-on experience helped attendees understand how to apply this financial knowledge to effectively lead and create positive change in their neighborhood.

Dr. Yates' financial literacy session was so well received by participants of the Spring 2024 Community Leadership Academy, that it became the basis of the group's final project. In this project, participants came together and applied their knowledge to a community-specific issue, demonstrating their ability to bring about positive change as emerging leaders. The project was presented at the academy's graduation ceremony—held at the Collat School of Business on May 7, 2024—to the Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, Hafiz F. Chandiwala, of Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Inc. The cohort will be facilitating financial education workshops throughout the summer in conjunction with City of Birmingham community days, where Dr. Yates will be the speaker at each of these events.

The Community Leadership Academy was further supported by Collat students through Professor Hayden’s Healthcare marketing course, in which strategies were identified to help the academy build a network of its alumni and reach potential participants for future cohorts.

Healthcare Marketing

In Professor Hayden’s course, students gained an understanding of healthcare marketing fundamentals. As part of the curriculum, the class read The Power of Moments and were tasked with applying principles from the book to real-world scenarios. One group decided to collaborate with Live HealthSmart Alabama to develop a recruitment and retention strategy for its Community Leadership Academy. This collaboration supported the initiative by outlining tactics to boost the Community Leadership Academy’s reach with potential participants while fostering a sense of community among current academy attendees.

From outlining marketing strategies for the Community Leadership Academy to conducting financial analyses, students at the Collat School of Business have been immersed in practical applications through the partnership with Live HealthSmart Alabama.

Integrating Live HealthSmart Alabama for a Healthier Future

Partnerships like the one between Live HealthSmart Alabama and UAB's Collat School of Business are key for driving positive change. They educate the community on important health and financial topics, provide tangible methods for sustainability, and enhance student understanding of course material through hands-on learning. More importantly, they inspire individuals like Collat School of Business Dean Chris Shook, PhD, who strongly supports this collaboration, to keep discussing and developing strategies to improve local communities alongside Live HealthSmart Alabama.

“Partnering with Live HealthSmart Alabama provided our students with invaluable, real-world experiences to apply their knowledge and engage directly with the community,” said Dr. Shook. “Together, we empower students and drive positive change in our local communities. I look forward to an ongoing collaboration with the Live HealthSmart Alabama team and to creating a lasting impact on the health and well-being of Birmingham residents.

Thanks to the dedication of UAB and students of the Collat School of Business, Live HealthSmart Alabama’s mission to make good health simple is becoming a reality. This partnership underscores UAB's ongoing commitment as an HPU to fostering health and well-being, both on campus and within surrounding communities.

To integrate Live HealthSmart Alabama into your curriculum, reach out to Teresa Shufflebarger, Chief Administrative Officer of Live HealthSmart Alabama, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. today and help shape a healthier and more sustainable future for all.