Central Wisconsin Health Partnership’s Collective Impact: Moving Towards Resilience

At a Glance

This project, Central Wisconsin Health Partnership’s Collective Impact: Moving Towards Resilience, aimed to raise awareness of health inequities in Central Wisconsin and mitigate them through policy change. The Central Wisconsin Health Partnership (CWHP) includes Family Health La Clinica and Adams, Green Lake, Marquette, Juneau, Waupaca and Waushara counties. The project yielded significant results, including the hire of a Community Health Engagement Coordinator and the identification of the region’s primary health concerns, including substance use disorders, mental health, lack of transportation and chronic disease, through a comprehensive community needs survey. These outcomes led to resource allocation, educational programs and advocacy efforts including the implementation of Health in All Policy (HiAP) resolutions in some regional counties.

The Challenge

The Central Wisconsin Health Partnership (CWHP) includes Family Health La Clinica and Adams, Green Lake, Marquette, Juneau, Waupaca and Waushara counties. The County Health rankings demonstrate persistent health disparities in Central Wisconsin, particularly impacting its rural and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. These communities face key issues including poverty, lack of education and limited services. Despite previous successful initiatives, the region faces barriers to continued improvements due to limited time and capacity.

Project Goals

The overarching goal of this project was to raise awareness of health inequities in Central Wisconsin and mitigate them by influencing policy change focused on long-term community health improvements. To work toward this goal, CWHP planned to hire a Community Health Engagement Coordinator to build internal infrastructure, foster community partnerships and improve the resiliency of the region. The project also aimed to conduct systematic evaluation of actions and goals to reduce health inequities, minimize unintended consequences, inform stakeholders of progress and guide decisions on the replication, revision or elimination of project components.

Results

The project employed a multifaceted approach to address health needs in Central Wisconsin. A Community Health Engagement Coordinator was hired, and they spent time attending community events where they educated individuals about the importance of healthy communities and the work that CWHP does. The Coordinator and other CWHP members participated in a number of educational and technical assistant programs, such as Wisconsin Health Literacy Summits, to refine their strategic plans. They also advocated for embedding health considerations into policies by reviewing or adding Health in All Policy (HiAP) framework across the six-county region. All counties were provided HiAP toolkits and some counties passed HiAP resolutions.

A comprehensive community needs survey was conducted to determine the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) areas to focus grant initiatives on. The survey identified substance use disorders, mental health, lack of transportation and chronic disease as primary concerns in the region. To meet these needs, resources were allocated to the creation of transportation, marketing and advocacy subcommittees as well as a Regional Comprehensive Community Services (CCS) Program and the Roche-A-Cri Consortium, which are focused on providing programming to individuals with mental illness and substance abuse disorders and increasing geographic access to addiction treatment and recovery support.

The organization’s engagement extended to fostering community partnerships, working with various coalitions and conducting community conversations to gather input and raise awareness of initiatives to address identified needs. A Health Equity Campaign was conducted to educate communities about health equity, SDoH and programs and initiatives aimed at addressing them. Education on SDoH was provided to the six-country region through social media posts and health equity messaging campaigns. Additionally, the organization addressed racial equity concerns by releasing a statement linking racism to poor health outcomes and initiating assessments to evaluate discriminatory policy.