Grant Program: Community Catalyst Grant

According to neuroscience, the first three years of life are a critical window of opportunity and time of increased vulnerability. Supporting a child’s social and emotional development while also being nurtured within culturally responsive relationships in which they can form secure attachments lays a solid foundation for lifelong health and well-being. The goal of this project was to create equitable access for Spanish-speaking early childhood educators to professional development opportunities related to social emotional development and infant mental health. Tools, resources and training were translated into Spanish and reflected the cultural awareness of the needs of Latin/x early educators. The grantees were able to make significant progress in strengthening equitable pathways to professional development and the IMH-E® (Infant Mental Health Endorsement) credential in Spanish. As a result of this project, Latin/x educators well-trained in this area were able to foster positive health outcomes for infants and children in their care.

This project led by Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health, Maroon Calabash and UBUNTU Research and Evaluation aimed to develop Black women’s leadership in reproductive justice by establishing a statewide reproductive justice and advocacy nonprofit. The project successfully transformed Maroon Calabash into a statewide organization led by Black women, implemented a community doula program and advocated for policy changes including Medicaid reimbursement for doula services and expanded coverage for midwifery care.

Through this project, Wisconsin middle and high schools showed the film titled Straight Forward: The Truth About Addiction and developed and used the accompanying curriculum. The project’s ultimate goal was to create awareness about Wisconsin’s addiction crisis and empower young people and their families with information and inspiration to live sober and successful lives. WisconsinEye staff presented the film to more than 12,000 students statewide in all-school assemblies, and thousands of students were engaged in post-film conversations with addiction prevention specialists. Lesson plans and complimentary video materials were created and packaged around the film for further learning. In addition, the film was viewed directly off the WisconsinEye website more than 3,500 times.

This project will complete the development of the online resource of free and subsidized healthcare and social services. The resource is designed to support the area’s most vulnerable and marginalized residents and connect them with the care and services they need by identifying nearby organizations that are able to provide care and services in real time.

Most healthcare education/training programs, including those at medical and pharmacy schools, do not offer courses that specifically focus on health challenges related to mass incarceration. Criminal justice system involvement is heavily stigmatized, which negatively impacts desire to interact with or gain a deeper understanding of current or formerly incarcerated individuals. This project focused on reducing the stigma students may have by providing the opportunity to hear directly from formerly incarcerated individuals. The grantees assembled a cross-campus multidisciplinary class on correctional healthcare that provides an overview of the complicated criminal justice system and matches future graduates to mentors delivering healthcare to inmates. The well-received course resulted in students considering how they might adapt their careers to address the specific health challenges presented in our criminal justice system. As a result, the course Medicine 809-Intersection of Health Care and Incarceration will be offered each spring and is open to medical, nursing, pharmacy, and PA students.

The goal of this project was to implement an enhanced bike share program in Wisconsin Rapids following the success of River Riders Bike Share, which was introduced in the city to increase physical activity and reduce obesity rates. This project was successful in developing an improved bike share program by engaging with the community, addressing barriers for underrepresented populations and adding accessible bikes and safety measures including bike lanes and signage. These changes resulted in a significant increase in ridership with 548 users utilizing the 30 cruiser bikes and three adaptive bikes. The program’s positive impact was evident in the increased physical activity and reduced air pollution, with an estimated elimination of 268 car trips and 230 pounds of carbon emissions.

Experts in childbirth education and doula births have gathered decades worth of data that supports doula-assisted birth as a promising model to address maternal infant mortality. However, increasing education on the benefits of utilizing doula services as well as gathering feedback on the best way to provide these services is crucial before doula programming can be enhanced in America. This project aimed to improve the experience of Black women during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum by building the capability and collaboration of the existing Black doulas in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and increasing the understanding of community needs around doula-assisted births. African American Breastfeeding Network successfully increased community awareness of the health benefits of doula-assisted births among stakeholders, politicians, birthing families, healthcare administrators, policymakers and the general public. They held meetings and collaborated with eight different community-based organizations to hold multiple virtual community conversations. This initiative also increased effective and efficient collaboration between Black doulas in Milwaukee County by providing space to build community.

The crisis of farmer suicide in Wisconsin cannot be ignored. In 2015, the rate of suicide for farmers was at least two and a half times that of the suicide rate of the general population. This crisis was grounded in the correlation between financial instability, farm foreclosures, high stress, and rates of suicide. Though this needed to be addressed, in southwestern Wisconsin, there was a lack of access to adequate mental health care for farmers. Effective targeted outreach for mental health support was needed to successfully engage members of the farming community in mental health education and interventions in order to improve mental health outcomes for farmers and address the crisis of farmer suicide. This project developed a comprehensive set of community-based education and intervention tools that was integrated into the farming community to address the immediate crisis of suicide and support the overall mental health of farmers. The grant team was successful in providing direct training in suicide and crisis prevention to farmers and their communities, skill building and stress management with farmers, and coordinating with a network of agri-business leaders. The success of this project has resulted in an additional grant to extend and expand this work.

This project led by Anesis, a Black-owned therapy center in Madison, aimed to address the high rates of violence and trauma experienced by children, particularly in the Black community. All Anesis staff were successfully trained in Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Brainspotting, and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) to help children and their caregivers work through trauma and prevent cycles of intergenerational trauma. While the original goal was to include training in Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), it was not feasible due to cost constraints. Instead, over 200 families were treated with TF-CBT, BrainSpotting and EMDR during the two-year grant cycle. The success of the project led to securing a substantial contract with Dane County Human Services to expand Anesis’ In-Home Mental Health Program for youth ages 0 to 17 years old.