MCW’s Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment awards $250,000 to assess health impact of Eau Claire community planning
The Medical College of Wisconsin’s (MCW) Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment awarded $250,000 over two years to assess the health impact of construction and redevelopment in Eau Claire. The intent of the assessment is to ensure that health disparities are understood by community planners and city officials so that health data can inform plans created for the West Bank Redevelopment and for future community development projects.
The Eau Claire City-County Health Department is the lead community partner on the award. The agency will work with Terry Brandenburg, MPH, CPH, director of MCW’s Master of Public Health program, and David Nelson, PhD, MS, associate professor of family and community medicine, and a number of additional community partners during the two-year project.
The project partners will investigate how design choices made in the West Bank Redevelopment of Eau Claire’s West Riverside neighborhood impact obesity and other health outcomes. These and future community planning choices may be able to reduce the proportion of Eau Claire residents that are overweight, which currently stands at more than 30 percent. One potential target for improvement is Eau Claire’s food deserts, which include sizable, lower-income populations that live a mile or more from any large grocery store. Another potential target is residents’ dependency on cars rather than physically active forms of transportation.
Community planning can benefit health through changes to the environment that encourage physical activity, such as walking or biking to work or to parks, retail centers or other community assets. Community planning can also potentially increase proximity to fresh food sources and family-friendly play areas that promote physical activity among youth.
Additional community partners working on this project are: City of Eau Claire Planning Department, Eau Claire Healthy Communities, Joining Our Neighbors Advancing Hope (JONAH), and Mayo Clinic Health System.
About the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment
The Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment works to catalyze health improvement in Wisconsin and was created by funds generated from Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin’s conversion to a for-profit corporation. The Endowment’s Healthier Wisconsin Partnership Program funded the new awards as part of its continued work supporting partnerships between academics and community health and non-profit organizations for urban, rural and statewide health improvement projects in Wisconsin.
About the Medical College of Wisconsin
The Medical College of Wisconsin is the state’s only private medical school and health sciences graduate school. Founded in 1893, it is dedicated to leadership and excellence in education, patient care, research and community engagement. More than 1,200 students are enrolled in MCW’s medical school and graduate school programs in Milwaukee, and 26 medical students are enrolled at MCW-Green Bay. A regional medical education campus is scheduled to open in Central Wisconsin in 2016. MCW’s School of Pharmacy will open in 2017 or 2018 with an initial class size of 60 students. A major national research center, MCW is the largest research institution in the Milwaukee metro area and second largest in Wisconsin. In FY 2013-14, faculty received approximately $154 million in external support for research, teaching, training and related purposes, of which approximately $138 million is for research. This total includes highly competitive research and training awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Annually, MCW faculty direct or collaborate on more than 2,000 research studies, including clinical trials. Additionally, more than 1,350 physicians provide care in virtually every specialty of medicine for more than 425,000 patients annually. For more information, visit mcw.edu.
