Focus Area: Community

Early childhood presents a unique developmental window of opportunity to set a trajectory for a lifetime, and in one’s earliest years, more than one million neural connections are made every second. Experiences in early childhood, whether positive or negative, have significant impacts that last a lifetime. Supporting Families Together (SFTA) created a Parent Leadership cohort with parents who were part of SFTA’s Parent Café project, a project that was meant to create places where parents and caregivers can come together with others in similar situations to learn from and support one another. The parents volunteered to serve in a leadership capacity as part of their local Parent Café team. As part of this cohort, the Parent Leaders participated in a year-long learning process so they would be able to lead the design of community-based supports aimed to address the health inequities associated with ACEs. These inequities are grounded in income and racial disparities, causing those affected to be more likely to have two or more ACEs than their peers, which is correlated with more health risk factors and negative outcomes. They also worked towards building protective factors, which are characteristics at the biological, psychological, family, or community level that reduce the negative impact of a risk factor on problem outcomes, as a community-based support. Some examples of protective factors include social connectedness, concrete supports, and parental resilience. The outcomes exceeded what the grantees had originally intended to accomplish with this project. The Parent Leaders were actively engaged throughout the entire process and requested the cohort to continue beyond the scope of this project as they are still eager to learn more and stay connected.

In Wisconsin, Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender Nonconforming (TNG) people face significant barriers to accessing knowledgeable, quality healthcare, contributing to health inequities that include higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. This project sought to improve both the physical and mental health of Wisconsin’s TNG populations by improving access to healthcare through the creation of a provider directory that links TNG patients to knowledgeable, inclusive healthcare providers.

The goal of this project was to implement policies and create system-level changes to reduce the burden of alcohol abuse in Ashland and Bayfield counties. The total annual economic cost of excessive alcohol use in Ashland County is $22.1 million, and $15 million in Bayfield County. Binge drinking is responsible for 76 percent of the economic cost of excessive alcohol consumption and, in 2014, excessive alcohol consumption in Bayfield County caused at least 115 alcohol-related hospitalizations and 210 alcohol related hospitalizations in Ashland County. In this project, Bayfield and Ashland counties worked in partnership to address the harmful effects of alcohol abuse and misuse. A toolkit consisting of an infographic handout, PowerPoint presentation, and additional resources (ex. signage) was created, reviewed, revised, and professionally printed. It was marketed to community stakeholders in the project area via town hall and community coalition meetings. The grantees saw in northern Wisconsin – particularly in Bayfield County – local changes surrounding alcohol and festivities, including gradual, small changes in policies at local festivals that are creating a safe environment when alcohol is served. There has been an increase locally of thoughtful planning of events involving alcohol, including mandatory carding of attendees, implementing wristbands for those ages 21 and over, and increased availability of non-alcoholic drinks at events.

This project, led by Bread of Healing Clinic (BOHC), aimed to address and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on low-income people of color who are uninsured. Early COVID-19 reports revealed significant disparities in its impact, like in Milwaukee where 73 percent of those dying from the virus were African Americans who comprised only 26 percent of the population. For low-income uninsured adults with chronic health conditions, access to ongoing health care, behavioral health care, medications and support in accessing community resources were major factors in managing health and COVID-19 risk. This project made significant strides in addressing the health care needs of uninsured adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. A telehealth model engaged 14 physicians and facilitated 517 telehealth visits, including specialized care in areas such as nutrition, dermatology and psychiatry. BOHC leveraged tools like Google Suite and “My Health Direct” to enhance data collection, revealing needs in primary and specialty care, diagnostic testing, insurance assistance and housing support. Finally, the project successfully connected 50 patients to free clinics and disseminated COVID-19 safety measures to approximately 1,800 individuals through a number of outreach efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted health inequities and disproportionately impacted communities in our state. Roots4Change Cooperative (R4C) and REAP Food Group collaborated on projects that advocated for food equity within the Latino community of Dane County, Wisconsin. The Farms to Families/De Granjas a Familias Fund (FFF) was created as a food security initiative that focused on addressing the financial and health disparities affecting Latino/Indigenous families in the county during the pandemic. FFF was created to address a forecasted food insecurity emergency, and to address the need to maintain connection when isolation was rampant. To reach their goal of supporting the Latino community and the surrounding food systems, the FFF team delivered food to families in need, supported young female and minority farmers in Wisconsin, provided temporary employment during the pandemic, created and distributed relevant educational materials, met with Governor Evers to discuss the biannual state budget, and facilitated therapy sessions with Latin American psychologists.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Greater Green Bay community faced increased food insecurity in vulnerable populations. This project aimed to address this challenge by securing additional funds, sustaining farmers markets’ ability to provide nutritious food and piloting a rapid response mechanism. The project successfully achieved its goals by funding the Double Your Bucks (DYB) and expanding it to non-Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligible Hispanic households through the Pandemic Double Your Bucks (P-DYB) program. The project also supported farmers markets in implementing safety measures and innovative approaches to ensure the access to nutritious food. The success of the project led to procurement of additional funding to expand the reach to low-income African American individuals in the future.

When the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) transitioned to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, their diverse student population, including students with health conditions associated with poor COVID-19 outcomes, lost access to school health services that provide assessments, education, referrals and care coordination. To address this barrier, MMSD implemented a program titled “Leveraging Personal Supports for Immediate COVID-19 Response for 4K-12 Students,” also known as the LPS program. The LPS program aimed to provide immediate support and resources to 2,000 MMSD students with medical conditions from June 2020 to May 2021. Results showed that 356 students and their families received services, with 92 percent requiring one to two support sessions. In addition to addressing physical health needs, the program pivoted to focus on addressing social determinants of health needs such as community resource referrals, food insecurity and housing assistance. The LPS program also provided health and cleaning supplies which helped foster positive relationships between families and staff. Because of these efforts, the LPS program received high satisfaction ratings from both families and staff.

Wisconsin is home to the third largest population of Hmong in the U.S., and since the 1990s, it has also been the site of resettlement of tens of thousands of newer refugees from Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet and Nepal. These communities experienced significant disparities that were exacerbated during the COVID-19 crisis. Additionally, seniors and parents in these communities were often home-bound, suffer from isolation from their peers, and jobless, while many did not have transportation for medical appointments or grocery shopping. The Hmong Institute created a collaborative of five local Hmong agencies in Wisconsin to address the immediate needs of Southeast Asian, Burmese, Nepalese, and Tibetan elders and parents who lack access to mainstream services due to language and transportation barriers. The grant team developed a community-based infrastructure to facilitate access to food and other resources for those experiencing disparities in access and need as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, created and disseminated culturally relevant, multilingual COVID-19 prevention messages and educational resources to ensure timely access to accurate and up-to-date information, and developed and implemented a statewide multilingual COVID-19 Community Hotline to provide information about basic health resources.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic created conditions that increased well-established risk factors for child maltreatment while also limiting access to protective social supports. The Marshfield Child Advocacy Center (MCAC) partnered with the Wood County Department of Human Services (WCDHS), Wood County Resilience Coalition, and several Wood County school districts to support families through the pandemic as a means to reduce risk for child maltreatment.

Community health workers in Barron County worked to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Somali and Hispanic residents in the county through innovative outreach methods and community-focused education efforts. Due to a lack of accurate, culturally-appropriate COVID-19 information in Somali and Spanish, community health workers sought to inform residents about health and safety measures to slow the community spread of COVID-19, as well as promote the importance of the vaccine. Community health workers in Barron County successfully reduced community spread of COVID-19 and promoted the vaccine with outreach and education to non-English speaking residents who face disparities in local care and kept minority populations as informed and updated during the pandemic as the English-speaking population. The grant team helped keep outbreaks in these communities at the same level or lower than the majority population and identified households that fell below or near the federal poverty level to ensure that they had all the necessary essentials to remain in quarantine provided and reduce spread in the communities. The grant team also contributed to the equal or higher vaccination rates in the county’s Hispanic population.