Organization: Wisconsin Department of Health Services, 1 West Wilson Street, Madison WI 53703-3445
Serving: State of Wisconsin
Application for: The State Physical Activity and Nutrition Program (CDC-RFA-DP-23-0012)
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ Chronic Disease Prevention Program (CDPP) has the experience, staff expertise, capacity, and organizational infrastructure to implement the proposed approach for CDC-DP23-0012. The purpose of our application is to improve access to healthier foods, opportunities for physical activity, support breastfeeding, and integrate national standards into early care and education (ECE) in Wisconsin. The SPAN Program will learn from communities to implement evidence-based strategies statewide and support local, tailored implementation in priority communities to reduce inequities and health disparities. We will engage key leaders and partners to make sustainable policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes that allow everyone to reach their full potential.
The Wisconsin SPAN Program will provide collaborative leadership for statewide PSE changes that support local-level work and strategy-specific implementation approaches. A cross-cutting approach will center health equity and community voice by embedding community engagement and assessment activities at the onset to better understand the needs of community partners for local implementation. Based on local needs, we will provide training and technical assistance related to community engagement and organizing, cross-sector partnership development, coalition building, health equity, needs assessment, action planning, evaluation, and sustainability.
We will increase the number of settings that increase access to healthier foods through the implementation of food service guidelines and food prescriptions programs. We will increase access to the Safe and Health Food Pantries tools and resources through communication and dissemination strategies to local and tribal health departments. We will also coordinate with tribal partners to reestablish traditional foodways and procurement practices for sustaining the Tribal Elder food boxes and other outlets where food is available within Wisconsin’s tribal nations. We will also implement activities to improve FoodShare access at farmers markets and participate in Wisconsin Food is medicine workgroup to develop and pilot produce prescription programs.
We will also increase the number of policies, plans, or community design changes that increase access to physical activity. We will partner with state-level organizations working on policy, systems and environmental changes for active transportation including allocation of new federal funding and transportation master plans. Locally, priority communities will be responsible for actively incorporating equity practices, community voice, and the needs of priority populations into local implementation activities that connect activity-friendly routes to everyday destinations.
Our activities will also focus on increasing the number of programs that increase access to continuity of care for breastfeeding families. We and our partners will offer support in engaging community members, building relationships with local stakeholders, and utilizing the Continuity of Care Blueprint to develop individual community action plans. Communities may implement activities like supporting lactation training for people who represent communities with low breastfeeding rates, working with employers or early care and education programs to improve breastfeeding support, or engaging with hospitals and clinics to establish local care coordination systems.
Finally, we will work to increase the number of ECE programs that are impacted by nutrition, physical activity, and breastfeeding standards and farm to ECE improvements. We will provide training and technical assistance to ECE sites statewide.