Event Recap — Health on the Plains Coffee Hour, Featuring Tony Pipa

4 Min Read

Aug 11, 2025

By

Wyatt J. Beckman, M.P.H.
Promotional image for “Health on the Plains,” featuring a wide, tilled farm field under a blue sky with scattered clouds. Bold black text reads “HEALTH” with “ON THE PLAINS” beneath it. On the lower left, a coffee cup graphic with steam and a leaf inside it sits above the words “COFFEE HOUR” and the URL “khi.org.” The bottom right shows the Kansas Health Institute logo with the text: “KANSAS HEALTH INSTITUTE – Informing Policy. Improving Health – khi.org.

How can rural policy be reimagined to better meet the needs of rural communities in the 21st century? 

On July 30, KHI hosted the second Health on the Plains Coffee Hour with a conversation featuring Tony Pipa, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development. The session focused on the ways rural policy – particularly at the federal level – can be reimagined to better meet the needs and opportunities of rural communities. Tony shared insights on the complexity of navigating federal programs for rural development, the ways funding requirements can become barriers for rural communities, and the value of investing in local people and institutions. 

Event recording posted below.

Featured Speaker

Tony Pipa, Senior Fellow, Center for Sustainable Development, The Brookings Institution  

Tony Pipa is a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution. Tony launched and leads the Reimagining Rural Policy initiative and hosts the award-winning Reimagine Rural podcast. Tony came to Brookings after serving in senior roles both at USAID and the State Department, where he led the U.S. at the U.N. during the intergovernmental negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals. That global work built upon a record of philanthropic leadership on community and economic development in the U.S., where he led a private foundation in North Carolina and helped launch the Foundation for Louisiana after hurricane Katrina. Tony grew up in rural Elysburg, Pennsylvania, attended Stanford University, graduated from Duke University, and earned a master of public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Explore the resources shared by Tony Pipa

About Kansas Health Institute

The Kansas Health Institute supports effective policymaking through nonpartisan research, education and engagement. KHI believes evidence-based information, objective analysis and civil dialogue enable policy leaders to be champions for a healthier Kansas. Established in 1995 with a multiyear grant from the Kansas Health Foundation, KHI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization based in Topeka.

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