Community Investment in Health: Developing the Lindsay Heights Wellness Commons

Key Personnel

John Frey, MD - Academic Partner
JoAnne Sabir
Community Project Staff

• Jessie Tobin LHNHA
• David Frazier CUPH
• Genyne Edwards Principal Consultant of WOO Connections and an Advocacy Consultant for the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

Funding

Wisconsin Partnership Project

Summary of Project

Many underserved communities face an array of economic and social burdens that contribute to inequities in health care and health outcomes. A wide array of state and federally conceived and implemented efforts to address these disparities have been ineffective, in part due to a failure of such efforts to adequately resonate with the unique needs of residents in these communities, thereby limiting the ability to enable and sustain necessary change. An alternative approach is to partner effective resident-led community organizations with committed academic institutions in order to develop evidence-based, community-anchored interventions to eliminate health inequities. We propose to deepen our investment in an established partnership between the Lindsay Heights neighborhood and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) - Community Health Connection in an effort to create the requisite blueprint for the Lindsay Heights Innovation and Wellness Commons (Wellness Commons). Dr. John Frey from SMPH will serve as our academic partner.

Goals

To develop a comprehensive health program implementation plan for the Wellness Commons. To achieve this, we will develop a Program Integration Committee (PIC) comprised of Lindsay Heights neighbors, care providers, health care systems, academic partners, Health Alliance Steering Committee members, and funding partners.

Methods

Will use a 3-phase planning process to develop an implementation plan focused on program development, sustainability, and evaluation:

Phase 1:
Initial planning phase, launched prior to the grant period, will focus on the engagement of diverse partners to serve on the PIC

Phase 2: Funding, Sustainability and Evaluation

The business plan will include a program analysis and environmental scan, Commons model description, an organization and management description, and a financial and operations plan

Evaluation and Research Plan

An infrastructure for research and evaluation will be built into the Commons, in order to measure effectiveness of program design and implementation and inform new programs to be housed within the Wellness Commons. Will develop an evaluation plan and identify resources needed to build evaluation capacity of the Commons and its partners

Partnership Commitments

Phase 3: Pilot Activities and Evaluation

Project partners will prioritize activities or health programs to be piloted and evaluated. These pilot activities will provide critical lessons learned and build capacity for full-scale program implementation and evaluation. Pilot activities will also foster additional resident engagement, relationship building, and dissemination of key findings and lessons learned.

Measurable outcomes will include:

1. Number of commitments received to support the shared vision and implementation process

2. Development of a comprehensive health program implementation plan and funding model

3. Document PIC group transformation

4. Development of evaluation and research plan

5. Implementation and evaluation of pilot activities

6. Identification of business development and employment opportunities

7. Measurable increase in individual and community-efficiency