Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers Awarded $1 Million in Funding for Social Determinants Screening

Milwaukee, Wis. (October 30) – Milwaukee, Wis. – Sixteenth Street Community Health Center was awarded $1 million in funding from the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health for its project, ¨Improving Health Outcomes by Proactively Integrating Social Determinants Screening into Primary Care Practice.”

The project’s ultimate goal is to reduce housing instability and address healthy inequities among Sixteenth Street’s patients and community, who are primarily Latino and live well below the federal poverty line. The community faces numerous challenges to obtaining community resources, such as navigating complex applications requirements, language differences and concerns about divulging sensitive information.

The project aims to gain a deeper understanding of the socio-economic factors, such as housing insecurity, that inescapably propagate health disparities on the south side of Milwaukee. Knowledge gained will be used to develop a collaborative model for healthcare and social services to close these health gaps and improve health outcomes for patients and community members.

The model will focus on patient-centered screening and interventions and purposeful data sharing across agencies to ensure a sustainable, systematic change to approaching and addressing social determinants in Sixteenth Street’s primary care practice. Dr. Julie Schuller, President and CEO of Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers, says, ¨ Interventions on the patient, organization and community levels are necessary to break the cycle of seemingly insurmountable obstacles that generation after generation of individuals suffer and to get people on a sustainable path to wellness. ¨

Michelle Corbett, MPH, CHES, Associate Researcher at the Center for Urban Population Health, will serve as the academic partner and lead evaluator on this project. Says Corbett, “We are committed to this partnership because of the great potential to make substantial policy, systems and environmental changes to reduce housing instability and address healthy inequities among Sixteenth Street’s patients and community.”

This project was one of four 2018 Community Impact Grant awards funded by the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The projects were selected for their potential to create conditions, systems and policy solutions that lead to equitable and sustainable improvements in health.

About Sixteenth Street

For almost 50 years, Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers has been helping and healing our community, providing quality, family-based health care, health education and social services free from linguistic, cultural and economic barriers. Nearly 40,000 individuals rely on Sixteenth Street for adult and pediatric medical services, behavioral health counseling and treatment, chronic disease management, supportive social services and health education. Sixteenth Street is accredited by The Joint Commission and recognized as a Patient Centered Medical Home by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. Learn more at www.sschc.org.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.