The COVID-19 pandemic heaped untold suffering across communities and exposed the longstanding structures, policies and systems that have produced unfair differences in how long and well people live.
In response to the pandemic and its impacts, UWPHI marshalled our collective resources to create a future that leverages existing knowledge, accelerates implementation and catalyzes necessary innovations. UWPHI pledged to “use what we have to do what we can” during this period of upheaval, uncertainty and loss.
Learn more about key COVID-19 initiatives and find a collection of original publications related the pandemic below.
Key Initiatives
Community Resilience & Response Task Force
The Community Resilience & Response Task Force (CRRTF) worked in collaboration with Resilient Wisconsin and Healthy Wisconsin (Department of Health Services) from March-December 2020.
The Task Force aimed to integrate concepts of community resilience, equity, and mental health across the state COVID-19 pandemic response, as well as set the stage for just recovery and future emergency preparedness infrastructure.
COVID-19 Response Corps
The Wisconsin COVID-19 Response Corps program (2019-2023) provided support to local health departments and tribal health centers (LTHDs) in building their capacity to prevent and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through training and the Wisconsin COVID-19 Response Corps Training and Service Program (RC).
UWPHI Insights
Original discourse on COVID-19 created by the UWPHI team
- Rethinking the Leading Health Indicators for Healthy People 2030 by Sheri Johnson, Marthe R. Gold, and Alina Baciu
Proposed LHIs are intended to reflect a balanced set of factors that contribute to overall health and drive equity. (Added 6/17/20)
UWPHI submitted written testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Ways & Means Committee for a hearing titled “The Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Communities of Color.” The COVID-19 pandemic is heaping untold suffering across communities, especially communities of color. We cannot thrive as a nation when the factors that contribute to good health are available to some and denied to others. COVID-19 exploits structural racism, leading to a disproportionate impact on communities of color. We must marshal our collective resources to alleviate the disproportionate burden of COVID-19. (Added 6/11/20)
- Data Don’t Speak For Themselves: Putting COVID19 Disparities In Context by Hilary Joyner and Olivia Little
We must know who is being most impacted by COVID-19, but data must be released with context and explanation to help us understand inequity. (Added 6/3/20)
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee residents faced an imminent threat and cruel quandary: Vote in person and risk our lives. Don’t vote and lose our right to shape the future.
- Public health pandemic responses must include automatic economic and social protections by Lawrence Brown
Public health pandemic responses should include automatic economic protection and swift relief for people already experiencing injustice.
- Improving Health Equity in Wisconsin (webinar)
This UW Global Health Institute webinar examines poverty, race and health in the state’s communities impacted by inequities. Sheri Johnson, director of the UW-Madison Population Health Institute, moderates the panel that includes Paula Tran Inzeo, director of the Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH) program, and Lakita Maulson, a UW medical student, class of ’21, in the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Nation. (The webinar is first in the UW Global Health Institute webinar series “COVID & Equity: What We’ve Learned; Where We Go From Here”) (Added 8/31/20)
CHR&R work includes a partnership with the University of Chicago on the US COVID Atlas, a webinar series on response and recovery, and more!
- Noon Wednesday: A Fair and Just Recovery (PBS Wisconsin)
Paula Tran Inzeo talks with Marisa Wojcik of PBS Wisconsin about A Fair and Just Recovery. Video and transcript. (Added 10/29/20)
Research by the UWPHI team
- Emergency COVID-19 Project (Behavioral Health – Prevention and Treatment)