City of Milwaukee Health Department issues call for public input into MKE Elevate Community Health Improvement Plan

MILWAUKEE — Today, the City of Milwaukee Health Department (MHD) released a draft of the city’s first community-driven health improvement plan, asking residents and public health stakeholders citywide to provide comment and feedback.

Called the MKE Elevate Community Health Improvement Plan, the draft plan is the result of an extensive process to assess the health of city residents and hear directly from residents, agencies, and organizations about the most pressing health issues they feel a communitywide effort can address.

The process to build the MKE Elevate Plan began with the 2016 release of the City of Milwaukee Community Health Assessment, a report detailing the health status of Milwaukee residents and the factors that impact health outcomes.

Using this data, the MHD sought to hear directly from community residents on the issues they believed most need to be addressed to improve health and well-being. More than 3,000 people answered an online and in-person survey, selecting their top five priority issues. A photo campaign also asked residents to visually identify healthy and unhealthy aspects of city life, receiving more than 1,000 submissions.

Based on this input, the MKE Elevate Plan seeks to respond to these community-selected priority areas: Supporting safer and healthier neighborhoods through activities that will align existing work or identify new strategies around economic security, a fair and inclusive society, and positive mental health.

To draft the MKE Elevate Plan, the MHD engaged partners in a series of community meetings, where goals, objectives, and current activities that support these efforts were identified.

Through September 30, additional comments and suggested activities for addressing the community-selected priorities will be accepted at Milwaukee.gov/MKEelevate. Public health stakeholders across Milwaukee are asked to:

1. Review the goals and objectives identified through a series of community planning meetings
2. Identify the current or planned activities you or your organization is engaged in that supports the work of these goals
3. Identify potential new activities or strategies to support the objectives
4. Sign up to be part of an action team to implement the work in one of the three priority areas

For more information and to view the plan, visit Milwaukee.gov/MKEelevate.