Grant Type: Community Grant

Mentoring Positive, a youth empowerment organization in Madison, is strengthening the health of its neighborhood and community. Through their WPP Community Impact Grant, Mentoring Positives will expand and evaluate The Positive Path, their combined youth programming initiatives, open to K-12 students in Madison’s Darbo neighborhood. Through this programming, Mentoring Positives promotes social cohesion, youth health and well-being by focusing on building trusting relationships, introducing social-emotional learning and developing life skills through mentoring, athletics and social entrepreneurship.

Home for Good will promote housing stability across Eau Claire county through the expansion of its tenancy support services and tenancy support peer mentors. Mentors with lived experience of housing insecurity will work with participants toward health, financial and permanent housing goals to build stability and independence.

First 5 Fox Valley is using a Community Impact Grant for the project Advancing the Help Me Grow Model with Family-engaged Developmental Modeling. The project’s goal is to improve early childhood health, development and family-level outcomes by expanding the national evidence-based Help Me Grow (HMG) model – a family-engaged developmental screening system of community resources – within underserved rural and urban Wisconsin communities. The project will support 9000 families with young children, prenatal-five, who might experience health disparities and inequities.

This project, led by the City of Madison Fire Department, provides students underrepresented in the public safety workforce with paid experience and formal mentorship, in order to support them in attaining eligibility for full-time employment with the Madison Fire Department. The overarching goal of this project is to expand workforce capacity. Michael Spigner, MD, EMT-P, Department of Emergency Medicine, UW–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, serves as the academic partner.

This project, led by Children’s Outing Association, will promote health equity within the Amani neighborhood—a Milwaukee community facing significant health disparities and elevated risk for many chronic health conditions — by building local community capacity and enhancing access to high quality primary care services and health education. David Frazer, MPH, Center for Urban Population Health, UW–Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, UW-Milwaukee, Advocate Aurora Research Institute, serves as the academic partner.

This project, led by GSAFE, addresses social and community factors that impact health for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other gender-expansive (LGBTQ+) youth at home and in school through the development and evaluation of interventions in the areas of educational policy analysis, educational leadership and family engagement. Mollie McQuillan, PhD, UW–Madison School of Education, serves as the academic partner.

This project, led by Embolden WI Inc., aims to improve health outcomes for communities in Milwaukee and Rock Counties by addressing the health factors of social connection and community belonging to promote civic engagement. Through culturally specific education and a civic health training program, this project will strengthen social connection and community belonging and build participants’ capacity as public health decision makers and influencers. Mary Beth Collins, JD, UW–Madison School of Human Ecology, serves as the academic partner.

This project, Medical Legal Partnership (MLP), led by Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association, Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association (WPHCA), Legal Action Wisconsin (LAW) and Judicare Legal Aid (Judicare) aims to improve financial stability and well-being for patients with lower incomes and unmet civil legal needs by connecting them with free health related legal services. Amy Washbush, PhD, UW–Madison School of Human Ecology, serves as the academic partner.

This project led by Marshfield Clinic seeks to improve food security for children and families in rural northern Wisconsin by partnering with after school programs on the four pillars of food security: availability of healthy foods, access to healthy foods, knowledge about preparation and stability of diet. Maggie Bohm-Jordan, PhD, Department of Sociology and Social Work, UW–Stevens Point, serves as the academic partner.

This project, led by Lutheran Social Services (LSS) seeks to improve the mental health crisis facing youth from historically under-resourced neighborhoods in Milwaukee County through the implementation of family coaching services and community engagement that addresses the social factors contributing to poor health and educational outcomes. Joshua Mersky, PhD, The Institute for Child and Family Well-Being, UW–Milwaukee, serves as the academic partner.