Notre Dame-led coalition aims to address wellness disparities in the South Bend-Elkhart neighborhood | News | Notre Dame News

The University of Notre Dame has convened a coalition of neighborhood wellness workers, neighborhood navigators and certified addiction peer recovery coaches to advance investigation, offer possibilities for student education and strengthen public wellness in the South Bend-Elkhart neighborhood.

The Michiana Neighborhood Wellness Coalition (MCHC) meets when per month to share information and sources and pursue options to problems that generally contribute to disparate wellness outcomes in the U.S., from lack of access to good quality, economical housing and transportation to poverty, educational inequality and mental wellness.

The group discusses problems and learns from every single other as properly as guests, which includes neighborhood professionals and Notre Dame researchers. These conversations are also invaluable for researchers to actually realize on-the-ground problems and collaborate with neighborhood partners.

As trusted members of the neighborhood, coalition members serve as liaisons among the neighborhood and nearby wellness systems, assisting to facilitate access to care and strengthen the good quality and cultural competency of person organizations and providers.

“You’re swimming across the river and swimming and swimming, and the wellness coalition comes along and says, ‘Here’s your boat and paddle’ and aids you get across.”

“These people are operating on the front line of wellness, listening and constructing trust inside our neighborhood to strengthen our program of care. Their operate is essential in understanding the demands that exist and in assisting create options,” mentioned Jessica Brookshire, senior plan director in the Workplace of Clinical Partnerships at Notre Dame.

Brookshire, along with Jennifer Lefever, managing director of the William J. Shaw Center for Youngsters and Households, and Jill Pentimonti, director of investigation advancement and Federal Relations, organized the group in December 2021. Initially, it began with 4 organizations — Beacon Wellness Program, Saint Joseph Wellness Program, St. Joseph County Division of Wellness and Oaklawn — that had begun employing neighborhood wellness workers and certified addiction peer recovery coaches. These organizations recognized the value of such operate and the chance to understand from these on the front lines of neighborhood wellness. The coalition now counts extra than 20 organizations from across St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall counties in northern Indiana.

Jessica Brookshire

According to Brookshire, this development speaks to the demands that exist. From the viewpoint of wellness organizations, it also speaks to the value of outreach, cultural competency and wellness literacy, as properly as the have to have to engage with and understand from people who are trusted members of the neighborhood. 

Currently, the coalition has created a network to strengthen access to care and sources across all segments of the neighborhood. This involves points such as housing, mental wellness care, meals applications, advance care preparing and chronic illness management.

Vanessa Coutee is a neighborhood wellness worker with Beacon Wellness Program in South Bend, exactly where she focuses on COVID problems and COVID vaccination. Participating in the coalition, she mentioned, has offered her with the information to superior serve her clientele.

“Before I began attending the coalition it was like, ‘Oh, I wonder what organization can assist us do this?’ But when I began attending the wellness coalition, it was like bridging the gap,” she mentioned.

In that sense, she compared the organization to a lifeboat.

“You’re swimming across the river and swimming and swimming,” she mentioned, “and the wellness coalition comes along and says, ‘Here’s your boat and paddle’ and aids you get across.”

She mentioned she spends significantly less time now tracking down sources and extra time engaging straight with her clientele.

“Having so a lot details so accessible is a massive point for us,” she mentioned. “It tends to make our job so a lot less difficult and permits us to concentrate on extra essential points rather than, ‘Oh, I’ve got to obtain sources for housing or this and that.’ If you currently have it you can say, ‘OK, what else can I assist you with?’”

The coalition is funded by the Lucy Loved ones Institute for Information and Society, which recognized the possible of the group to establish collaborations inside and among neighborhood partners. In reality, immediately after conversations in the course of MCHC meetings, the Lucy Loved ones Institute, the Notre Dame Lead Innovation Group and numerous neighborhood partners proposed and have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to create new tests and technologies to lessen childhood lead exposure in the South Bend-Elkhart area. Beyond the grant, the Center for Civic Innovation and John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technologies and Values has collaborated with the MCHC on student projects to help the coalition and benchmark operate across the United States.

In the end, the group plans to operate with a range of campus and neighborhood partners to engage in conversations to strengthen the wellness and properly-getting of the neighborhood, which includes securing funding sources that connect demands with sources.