Focus Area: Community

Through its grant, Supporting Families Together Association (SFTA),and its grant partners, will focus on improving health outcomes by implementing intervention strategies in early childhood education to address disparities in rates of expulsion among young children in Wisconsin.

The FREE Campaign seeks to improve health outcomes for formerly incarcerated women and their families by increasing access to safe, stable and supportive housing and resources to support successful recovery and reentry. The team will employ various approaches including transitional and reentry housing coordination in Milwaukee, Madison and the Chippewa Valley to achieve its goals. The FREE Campaign is an initiative within EXPO (Ex-incarcerated People Organizing), led by criminal justice-impacted women; EXPO is an affiliate of WISDOM, a faith-based community organization in Wisconsin. Lori DiPrete Brown, UW–Madison School of Human Ecology serves as the academic partner.

Farmers are an occupational group with one of the highest rates of death by suicide- as much as two and half times the rate of the general population. To impact the number of farmers experiencing mental health distress and prevent farmer suicides, this project, Farm Well Wisconsin, aims to develop a comprehensive range of upstream interventions to create an ecosystem of support to foster farmer resilience. In its two first years, Farm Well has trained more than 700 rural community members and agribusiness professionals in peer support and suicide prevention, expanded their social media reach 10-fold and conducted training for more than 75 health providers, residents and medical students. Farm Well staff members have also been asked to join statewide coalitions and steering committees related to farmer mental health and rural suicide prevention.

Oneida Nation will develop a model of programming that promotes food sovereignty and cultural identity among Indigenous communities as a comprehensive approach to reducing health disparities and improving health and healthcare. Dr. Bret Benally Thompson, a clinical assistant professor in the SMPH Department of Medicine and advisory council member of the SMPH’s Native American Center for Health Professions, serves at the academic partner.

This project, led by Community Advocates, Inc., aimed to improve health and reduce the inequities within Wisconsin that are driven and reinforced by poor housing conditions. In Milwaukee, over 28,000 rental units were deemed moderately to severely inadequate to live in and nearly 16,000 adults and children face eviction each year. Disparities exist as women and people of color are over 50 percent more likely to be evicted than men or white individuals. The lack of quality, stable and affordable housing leads to poor health outcomes. In collaboration with Human Impact Partners, the project conducted a modified Health Impact Assessment (HIA), leading to the publication of the “Home Is Where Our Health Is” report with policy recommendations. The formation of the Healthy Housing Initiative’s Housing Advisory Council facilitated stakeholder engagement and contributed to the establishment of the Milwaukee Rental Housing Resource Center. The center’s triage team provided diverse services and resources to over 2,300 households in six months. Finally, a website was launched and garnered substantial engagement, with over 158,000 visitors since its launch in December 2020.

This project, led by the Dane County Health Council and the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness, aims to reduce racial inequities in birth outcomes through care coordination. Wisconsin has the highest Black infant mortality rate in the country, and Black infants born in Dane County are two times more likely to die in their first year of life than white infants. Factors contributing to racial disparities in birth outcomes are attributable to social and economic challenges in Dane County, including inadequate housing, food insecurity, lower educational attainment, fewer economic opportunities, poverty and structural racism. The project has made significant progress toward its goals in the first three years. ConnectRx is a closed-loop referral system developed in partnership with Epic Systems and UW Health and launched in April 2022. ConnectRx allows providers to make social prescriptions and integrates over 1,200 unique resources into patients’ electronic health records. Six Black female community health workers were hired to enhance maternal care teams, and a partnership with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness provided doula support. These efforts have resulted in assistance for over 200 Black birthing persons and their families, addressing needs such as rental assistance, homelessness prevention, mental health support, job-related assistance and food pantry referrals.

The Strong Fathers Strong Families Project, led by Fathers Making Progress, aimed to address maternal and infant health disparities among Milwaukee’s Black families by focusing on the role of fathers and father figures. Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in the United States as historical and systemic racism have perpetuated disparities in income, health and other socioeconomic measures that contribute to urgent health crises and increased violence and civil unrest. Previous work has demonstrated the positive impact of engaging fathers to improve family well-being, however a need for innovative and sustained efforts to address these challenges remained. Fathers Making Progress exceeded their goals in empowering Milwaukee’s Black communities through efforts like the Fatherhood Mobilization Project, which conducted over 350 interviews in neighborhoods like Washington Park, Metcalfe Park and Lindsay Heights to inform innovative programming. They successfully hosted 50 Men’s Wellness Groups and 30 intergenerational sessions at local high schools, enhancing social connections and stress management skills among attendees. Additionally, their healthy relationship workshops evolved into the Love Lab series, which integrated relationship counseling and social activities to provide practical relationship tools.

Funding for this grant has ended. EXPO (Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing) has received an award for the FREE campaign that focuses on supporting Black women recently released from incarceration seeking to reunite with their children and also supporting women before a possible pregnancy. The organization and its partners will offer access to low/no cost doula services, breastfeeding support, family support through a two-generation lens to ensure a supported community transition.

Next Door Foundation, in collaboration with Penfield Children’s Center, has received a grant for a project that will provide enhanced support to Black families with children under the age of one in Milwaukee. This project aims to strengthen access to post-partum maternal care and address infant needs through community-based activities, increase knowledge of the social determinants of health, inform of the risk factors associated with premature births and infant mortality, and provide information related to prevention and early intervention strategies in Milwaukee.

Children’s Service Society of Wisconsin is leading the project Milwaukee Right Start, this project will establish home visiting services for pregnant or parenting women of color to address the significant disparities facing Black families in Milwaukee.