Jackson Helps Lead New Project via Wisconsin Partnership Program Award
November 2, 2018
From UW-Madison School of Education:
Jerlando Jackson, director and chief research scientist of Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory within WCER, is the academic partner in a university intiative to improve health and health equity across Wisconsin.
Jackson will work with the Nehemiah Community Development Corporation on its initiative “Reducing Health Inequity through Promotion of Social Connection” initiative that focuses on reducing disparities in overall health among African Americans by addressing implicit and structural racism. The program expands its Justified Anger pilot work.
African-Americans in Wisconsin have poorer health outcomes than their white neighbors due the powerful influence of their social and community context. Those health disparities include higher rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, premature births and maternal deaths. To address these health disparities, Nehemiah has been piloting an innovative approach to increasing health equity by developing new, and strengthening existing, social and professional networks for African-Americans.
This grant will implement a three-tiered approach that will involve education and training for grassroots African American neighborhood leaders, African-American professionals and white allies through its “Justified Anger Black History for a New Day.” The team will facilitate cross-cultural interactions with mentorship support that will result in building and strengthening social networks within each community and will support participants with identifying opportunities for collaborative social action.
Jackson is the Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, and a faculty member with, and chair of, the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
The Nehemiah Community Development Corporation is receiving one of five university grants the Partnership Program’s Community Impact Grant program. Each grant totals $1 million over five years to support large-scale, evidence-based, community-academic partnerships aimed at achieving sustainable systems changes to improve health equity in Wisconsin.
