About Healthy Milwaukee

Community engagement initiatives to improve child health outcomes in Milwaukee

In 2010, Children's Wisconsin partnered with three neighborhoods — Amani/Franklin Heights, Lindsay Heights, and Metcalfe Park — for initial engagement efforts towards having community-initiated change, bringing greater community resiliency, resident empowerment, and improved health outcomes.

Children's initiated a community-based effort to improve child health acknowledging the influence of social, cultural and environmental factors on health and recognizing that such influences may have particularly harmful effects when they occur during critical periods over one's life course.

Studies show that children who grow up in healthy environments — with engaged and supportive families, nutritious food, opportunities for physical activity, clean and safe physical surroundings, and access to excellent health care — have better health outcomes, better quality of life, enhanced civic engagement, and lower healthcare costs. In addition, studies demonstrate that when individuals are meaningfully engaged in the transformation of their own health or when populations are invested in the transformation of their own communities, they are more likely to develop health self-efficacy skills, to sustain active participation in self-governance, and to foster community cohesion.

It is not simply what the research shows, but it is because Children's believes that Wisconsin can have the healthiest pediatric population in the nation. And it is because of that vision, that we believed in a healthy Milwaukee.