The Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment, a statewide health philanthropy based at the Medical College of Wisconsin, has announced grants totaling $6.5 million in support of research projects dedicated to improving health and advancing health equity across the state.

Funding was awarded in support of seventeen projects focused on underserved, marginalized, and stigmatized populations as well as projects that aim to address emerging and longstanding health issues such as suicide, intimate partner violence, substance abuse, access to mental health care, and the critical need to expand health care and the community health workforce. Projects supported through the Basic, Clinical and Translational Science Pathway include Molecular Pathogenesis of Common Variable Immunodeficiency, led by Denim Wang, and Iyengar Yoga as a Probe of Prolonged Grief Disorder Neurobiology, led by Joseph S. Goveas. Projects awarded funding through the Education and Workforce Development Pathway include Student Champions: Connecting Dementia Patients and Caregivers to Essential Community Resources at Marquette University and Pediatric Readiness Program for Community Emergency Departments at Children's Health Alliance of Wisconsin.

Projects supported through the Policy and Systems Change Pathway include Reducing Medication Errors: Adopting Evidence-Based Directions for use on Prescription Labels at Wisconsin Literacy, Inc. and Battling the Bottleneck: Increasing Capacity for ASD Diagnosis Within Primary Health Care Across Wisconsin at Marquette University. And projects supported through the Population and Community Health Studies Pathway include Integrating Advocates Within a Healthcare Setting to Strengthen Intimate Partner Violence Screening at the Sojourner Family Peace Center and Effects of Mass Communication on Veteran Suicide Prevention: Help Seeking and Firearm Safety Behaviors at the War Memorial Center.

"At the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment, we are working to create a healthier state today, and for generations to come" said Jesse Ehrenfeld, AHW director senior associate dean at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "We are pleased to be supporting a set of community initiatives and research projects that show great promise to improve health in Wisconsin."