Wisconsin Partnership Program awards $2.2 million to fight COVID-19

The Wisconsin Partnership Program has awarded $2.2 million to researchers and community organizations working to address the impact of COVID-19.

The endowment program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health announced 21 awards last week. The 11 community grants are:

• $150,000 to Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers to disseminate information to help Milwaukee’s Latinx community navigate the pandemic.
• $150,000 for the Hmong Institute to address the needs of underserved immigrant communities throughout the state as they address the pandemic.
• $149,600 to the African American Breastfeeding Network for Black Birth Workers and its clients to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties.
• $143,490 to Marshfield Child Advocacy Center at Marshfield Clinic Health System to reduce the risk of child maltreatment in Wood County families as a result of parental stress due to the pandemic.
• $138,160 to the Madison Metropolitan School District to provide support and resources for a group of 2,000 school children with medical conditions associated with poor outcomes from COVID-19.
• $129,630 to the Bread of Healing Clinic in Milwaukee for outreach and access to telehealth for low-income people of color who are uninsured.
• $62,000 to Porchlight, Inc. in Dane County to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by allowing virtual volunteers to screen homeless shelter guests daily and before entering.
• $60,630 to Barron County to reduce the spread of COVID-19 through education and outreach efforts to the community’s Spanish and Somali communities.
• $57,190 to REAP Food Group in collaboration with Roots4Change, a collaborative of community health workers serving Dane County’s Latino/indigenous families, to develop a care system related to the pandemic.
• $54,010 to Wello to address food insecurity in Greater Green Bay.
• $32,290 to the Catholic Multicultural Center in Madison to help clients with food and hygiene as well as unemployment benefits.

The 10 research grants, which are up to $150,000 each, will go to projects that involve:

• Looking at antibodies for patient diagnostic, therapy and research.
• Improving the identification of COVID-19 pneumonia on routine chest radiographs.
• Using social networks to provide information on COVID-19 in African American, Latinx and American Indian communities.
• Determining how a negative isolation head chamber could protect healthcare workers from airborne transmission of viruses.
• Teaching the general public how to test and maintain masks.
• Tracking the virus by creating a COVID-19 convalescent tissue biorepository for blood and nasal samples of people who have recovered.
• Studying how self-administered nasal and back-of-the-throat disinfectants reduce the development of COVID-19 in healthcare workers.
• Study the “nasal microbiome” to determine compositions that are associated with COVID-19 outcomes.
• Genetic surveillance of COVID-19.
• Testing the efficacy of a potential vaccine in Syrian hamsters.

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