Partnerships That Move Health Forward
These are just a few Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) grantees whose work is positively impacting health in Wisconsin.
See more on our Featured Grantees page.
Developing Public Health Leaders to Serve the State
A WPP-funded education initiative is helping address the long-standing shortage of public health leaders in Wisconsin and across the nation. The Wisconsin Population Health Services Fellowship, a cornerstone of WPP’s educational investments, attracts and places early-career public health workers in government and community-based organizations. The fellows support public health programming for local health initiatives and build their skills as public health leaders. To date, more than 97 fellows from diverse backgrounds have served at more than 50 placement sites throughout Wisconsin, including urban, rural and tribal communities. Eighty percent of recent fellowship graduates have gone on to fill public health leadership positions in Wisconsin.
Meet some of the fellows serving our state.
Connecting Clinics, Campuses and Communities
With funding from a WPP Community Impact Grant, Marshfield Clinic Health System (MCHS) has established a Community Connections Team (CCT), in partnership with UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stevens Point. The team connects patients with community resources to help them overcome obstacles to health improvement, including accessing resources for food, housing, transportation and other vital needs. More than 140 students from UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stevens Point who are planning to enter a variety of health professions have been trained to staff the CCT. To date, Marshfield health providers have screened 53,700 patients. Of those, 7,600 were referred to the CCT. As a result, CCT staff made more than 17,000 referrals to agencies such as food banks, dental clinics, energy and transportation services and more to address critical patient needs. MCHS is incorporating a new software platform to support this work and sustain the program beyond the grant.
Read about the Community Connections Team.
UW System Students Bolster Health Care Workforce
COVID-19 placed tremendous pressure on Wisconsin’s health care facilities. To support Wisconsin’s health care workforce during and after a pandemic surge, the UW–Madison School of Nursing, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin System and WPP, developed a program to provide tuition support to enrolled students who completed at least 50 hours of work in a Wisconsin clinical or health care setting. Ultimately, 1,689 UW System students across 13 UW System campuses participated in the project, serving 79 different zip codes across the state and providing critical workforce infrastructure when Wisconsin health systems needed it most.
Read the tuition program outcome report.
Transforming Health for Black Women and Families
The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness (FFBWW) is working to eliminate the health disparities impacting Black women in Dane County and Wisconsin, where Black birth disparities and racial health disparities are among the worst in the nation. With an initial four-year grant from WPP, the FFBWW expanded its staff and capacity, strengthened collaborations with health systems and community partners and realized one of its central priorities: the creation of a community health worker program. The FFBWW then successfully competed for a WPP Community Impact Grant to support the creation of the Well Black Woman Institute, an innovative leadership development program. The FBWW also plays a key role on another WPP-funded project, Connect Rx, a new model of clinical and community care coordination that has served more than 200 pregnant women in Dane County, providing support needed to promote a healthy peri-partum period. With support from the WPP, the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness is advancing its mission to transform how Black women experience health and build solutions that can be replicated across the state.
Learn about WPP projects led by the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.