The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness has received a $1 million, five-year grant from the Wisconsin Partnership Program for its project, Accelerating Health Equity for Black Women in Wisconsin, the organization announced on Friday. Funds will support the Foundation’s launch of the Well Black Woman Institute, an innovative training ground to prepare Black women as health equity leaders across Wisconsin starting in Dane, Rock and Milwaukee counties.
Established in June 2012, The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness engages and supports over 5,000 women and girls each year to build healthier lives through education, outreach, support circles, powerful partnerships, and by influencing systemic change. The Foundation’s project is one of six grants funded by the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health through its Community Impact Grants program. The projects were selected for their potential to create the conditions, systems and policy solutions that advance health equity and lead to equitable and sustainable improvements in health.
“We are elated to be awarded a WPP Community Impact Grant to continue to advance our work to transform Black women’s health in Wisconsin where we continue to lead the nation in racial health disparities,” says FBWW CEO and President Lisa Peyton-Caire in a statement. “We know that moving Wisconsin from worst to best for Black women’s health starts with Black women having the power, access, and resources to drive the change we need in our lives, communities, and in systems. The Well Black Woman Institute will enable us to set this powerful cycle of change that is core to our work into motion across our state.”
The Foundation will spend 2021 planning and designing the Institute and will launch with its first cohort of trainees in 2022, the organization said in a press release, and participants will step through a curriculum delivered virtually that will cover health equity, leadership, civic engagement, advocacy and organizing. The Foundation’s project team which includes Wisconsin Population Health Institute Director Sheri Johnson, Ph.D., a distinguished leader in the public health arena who will assist with project and evaluation design, will also collaborate with other health equity experts and community leaders to design and deliver the Institute’s curriculum.
“Our goal is to design a training experience that is powerful, cutting edge, and world class,” says Alia Stevenson, Chief Programs Officer for the Foundation, who is a co-lead on the project. “Well Black Woman Institute graduates will be poised and ready to lead change in our state and to create the new, thriving future Black women deserve in Wisconsin.”
