Chronic Conditions

Healthy Metric went live today, releasing five new brief reports focused on health disparities in Wisconsin. These first reports provide an initial look at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on health and health disparities. The first five reports provide an initial look at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on health and health disparities. They cover a wide range of issues impacting health outcomes and health care in Wisconsin including:

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke, two leading causes of premature death in Americans (CDC - High Blood Pressure). In fact, heart disease is the leading cause of death in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Department of Health Services - Heart Disease).

Are you interested in local level data on vaccinations, screenings, blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and more for your research? This lunch & learn will show how to leverage ICTR Neighborhood Health Partnership (NHP) program data on WI neighborhoods (zip code level) covering 27 health outcomes and care measures spanning the care continuum including wellness, prevention, risk factors for chronic diseases and chronic disease care. Attendees will also learn about funding opportunities for competitive research proposals through the ICTR Pilot Award Program.

The Medical College of Wisconsin’s Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Wisconsin Partnership Program have announced a joint three-year, $3 million grant to launch an expansive new statewide partnership that will study, measure and recommend solutions for health inequities across the state of Wisconsin.

The 2020 Wisconsin Health Disparities Report: Rural and Urban Populations was released at the WCHQ Health Disparities Assembly meeting on November 12, 2020. The assembly featured urban and rural perspectives on health disparities from experts in their fields: HIP Investigator, Jennifer Weiss, MD, MS and Matt Gigot, MPH, presented the findings from the 2020 report and Malia Jones, PhD, MPH presented her research on social and spatial determinants of health at the population level.

Dr. Edmond Ramly has been named one of the 2021 ICTR-CAP Stakeholder & Patient Engaged Research Pilot Awards for his Addressing disparities in the primary care of chronic conditions in the COVID-19 era: A tool for clinics to map local barriers to known strategies project.

A new publication by Dr. Christie Bartels was recently featured in a press release by Wiley. Although smoking increases symptoms and health risks for patients with rheumatic diseases, interventions to help patients quit are rarely available at rheumatology clinics.

In this article, authors implemented a rheumatology staff-driven protocol, Quit Connect, to increase the rate of electronic referrals (e-referrals) to free, state-run tobacco quit lines (TQL). The group found that implementing Quit Connect in rheumatology clinics was feasible and improved referrals to a state-run TQL.

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The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), in collaboration with Health Innovation Program, developed the Wisconsin Health Disparities: Rural and Urban Populations Report to help inform and accelerate programs that are working to eliminate disparities. The 2020 report identifies where disparities in health outcomes and care exist in rural and urban areas in Wisconsin by using a unique categorization system developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Health Innovation Program (HIP). Funding for this report was provided by the Wisconsin Partnership Program, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

We are pleased to announce the pilot launch of the UW ICTR Neighborhood Health Partnerships Program (NHP).

Finding timely and accurate local health data – health information at the sub-county level - is a challenge we all face when prioritizing, scoping, implementing and evaluating health and health equity work. Health information is often only available at the county level or higher. Neighborhoods within counties are heterogeneous, and sub-county data can offer insight into patterns of health inequities and help identify local factors that can promote health and well-being.

HIP Investigators Christie Bartels (PI), Edmond Ramly (Co-I) and Heidi Brown (Co-I) received the 2020 ICTR Dissemination & Implementation Research Pilot Award for this project: Extending BP Connect: Implementing in diverse specialty clinics and for out-of-network follow-up