Medical College endowment awards $1.7 million to statewide health initiatives

The Medical College of Wisconsin’s Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment has awarded $1.7 million to five initiatives aimed at improving health statewide.

The projects include:

• $581,928 to the Wisconsin EMS Association. The award will allow for the expansion of a pilot project in Milwaukee, which has made dispatcher-assisted bystander CPR pre-arrival instructions available to all 911 callers in the county. The award will allow regional health care coalitions to expand the program across the state.
• $397,837 to the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, the Wisconsin Native American Tobacco Network and partners. The award will support a community-driven process to develop and implement smoke-free policies in tribal housing, working to lower the rates of chronic diseases and cancer mortality among American Indians in Wisconsin.
• $374,892 to the Bike Fed of Wisconsin, the City of Milwaukee and partners. The award will help enhance systems to increase walking and biking infrastructure in neighborhoods across the city.
• $374,055 to Sojourner Family Peace Center. A coalition of agencies will work to reduce the long-term, toxic effects of family violence on children. The initiative will advance a system of support to children who witness family violence, aiming to decrease the likelihood that a child witness of violence will continue the cycle in adulthood while also reducing the negative physical, behavioral, cognitive and social consequences of family violence to children.
• An incubator award of $10,000 will support agencies in the Fox Valley region in developing a strategic plan for improved transit access to advance health outcomes of residents.

Each of the projects will begin work in July 2018.

“At the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment, we work to support promising solutions to health needs statewide,” said Cheryl A. Maurana, founding director of the AHW Endowment at MCW. “We congratulate these partners on exciting proposals and look forward to supporting their work to advance health in their communities, regions, and statewide.”