Wisconsin Partnership Program Turns 20

Her days at the Elroy Family Medical Center are varied and full. She may do a well-baby checkup, perform a colposcopy and help an elderly patient find supportive care to continue living at home. She also delivers babies and is chief of staff at Mile Bluff Medical Center in nearby Mauston. Located in picturesque Juneau County, Elroy is home to fewer than 1,500 people, and Mauston around 4,300.

On her 40-minute drive home via country roads, she is eager to catch up with her twins, who soon will enter first grade. Sebranek delivered nearly half of their classmates. This is the life she dreamed of when she joined the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM), a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) program that trains medical students who are committed to improving the health of rural communities.

“I truly believe there’s no better place to practice medicine than a small town,” said Sebranek. “I’m proud to be a graduate of a school that stresses public health and a graduate of WARM.”

WARM is one of many public health and education investments supported by the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) since it began making grants 20 years ago — and one of the many ways WPP has helped SMPH transform into the nation’s first combined school of medicine and public health.

Charged with improving the health of the people of Wisconsin — in ways such as training health care providers and public health leaders; promoting research and discovery; and creating community partnerships that address health disparities and advance health equity — WPP has awarded 636 grants totaling $301 million since 2004. In turn, grantees have leveraged more than $776 million in funding from other sources to sustain their projects.

“The Wisconsin Partnership Program is the engine that drove our transformation into the nation’s first school of medicine and public health. Today and into the future, it will continue to drive the advancement of health in our state through strategic investments in research, education, and community programs,” said SMPH dean Robert N. Golden, MD.

History

WPP’s roots go back to 1999, when Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin announced it was converting from a non-profit to a for-profit corporation, with proceeds to be donated equally to Wisconsin’s two medical schools: the UW Medical School (now SMPH) in Madison and Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The transfer occurred in early 2004.

“The purpose of the gift,” said Thomas Hefty, retired chief executive officer of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, “was for public health, scholarship, and faculty support.”

The initial Blue Cross/Blue Shield gift totaled more than $300 million to each school and had terms that are still followed today, including that 35 percent of its grants go to community health projects and 65 percent to research and education; requirements for oversight and accountability; and the call for then-dean Philip M. Farrell, MD, PhD (PG ’72), and Medical College of Wisconsin president Mike Bolger to jointly lead listening sessions to learn about health needs.

“We traveled the entire state, meeting with communities all the way up to Ashland on Lake Superior,” Farrell recalled. “We talked about the community-academic partnership theme. This was a natural for SMPH — our school was pursuing the Wisconsin Idea.”

A pediatrician and cystic fibrosis expert and now an emeritus dean, Farrell said it was his dream to create the country’s first combined school of medicine and public health.

“I realized that with our excellent Department of Population Health Sciences, world-class epidemiologists, and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene on our campus, we had a strong core to become a school of medicine and public health,” he said. “Would we have been able to do it without the Blue Cross/Blue Shield money? Absolutely not.”

Reflecting about hiring Eileen Smith as the first WPP director in 2004, Farrell said, “We were very fortunate to have Eileen in that leadership position.”

Smith came to the school from UW Hospital and Clinics (now UW Health), where she played a significant role in the complex conversion of the hospital from a state agency into a public authority. With Tonya Mathison — who is now WPP’s administrative director — by her side, Smith pored over the insurance commissioner’s directives for disbursing the Blue Cross/Blue Shield funds. They created a program from the ground up, with no models in the medical school for what they needed to do.

About the insurance commissioner’s plans for creation of the Oversight and Advisory Committee (OAC), which oversees the community grants, Smith said, “We ensure that the community’s voice is represented through our governance committees.”

An OAC member since the beginning is Greg Nycz, chief executive officer of the Family Health Center of Marshfield, Inc. A strong advocate for rural health, Nycz — who also serves on OAC’s sister committee, WPP’s Partnership Education and Research Committee (PERC), which oversees grants for research and education — recalled that, initially, some people expressed distrust about the university conducting research in northern Wisconsin.

“I think we’ve gone a long way to allay the distrust we heard about,” Nycz said. “I think the program has done a lot more to engender pride about being from Wisconsin and having a great university. We’re getting out there with our health programs, working collaboratively with communities. We’re thinking through the impact of the work on the people of Wisconsin.”

Nimbleness

During early discussions, Hefty recalled, renowned cancer researcher Paul Carbone, MD, said the grant money should be used broadly, not for a specific medical field.

“[Dr. Carbone said] medical science changes rapidly, and we don’t know what issues will be important in 10 or 20 years, but Blue Cross/Blue Shield has given the UW the resources and freedom to follow the science,” Hefty said.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed why it is critical for WPP to be able to pivot quickly to meet a sudden health threat, said Amy Kind, MD ’01, PhD ’11 (PG ’05, ’07), WPP executive director and SMPH associate dean for social health sciences and programs.

“In March 2020, the entire world shut down,” Kind said. “Here at WPP, we were one of the first entities to move forward to get funding out to address pandemic-related needs. We were able to allocate more than $6 million for rapid dissemination to support research and education and to help community groups address this horrible pandemic.”

On May 1, 2020, WPP awarded its first round of 24 COVID-19 Response Grants, totaling $2.9 million, including grants for virus screenings in homeless shelters; support for people with food insecurity; and community health outreach programs in Hmong, Latino, American Indian, and Black communities. WPP also funded critical research projects. A second cycle of awards followed.

“To be part of WPP at that time seared into my soul the importance of nimbleness. When the health of the state requires us to move quickly, we must do so,” Kind said.

Community

Since 2004, WPP has allocated nearly $100 million for 363 community grants to address a wide range of complex health challenges facing Wisconsin communities. These examples represent a small selection.

Recent grants have addressed the statewide opioid crisis, including a grant to Marinette County-based Biehl Bridges to Recovery to support recovery-friendly workplaces. WPP also supports a collaboration between the Wisconsin Hospital Association and Randall Brown, MD, PhD ’09 (PG ’04), a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, to improve access to care for people struggling with substance-use disorders in rural Wisconsin. Brown also earned a PERC grant to prevent opioid addiction in people recovering from traumatic injury.

WPP has been dedicated to improving outcomes for Black newborns and their mothers because Black infant mortality remains a serious health disparity in Wisconsin. A $1 million grant supports ConnectRx Wisconsin, which provides community health workers (CHWs) and doulas to address essential perinatal and non-medical health factors and provide social support, including rental and job assistance; mental health care; and food-pantry referrals. Ninety percent of babies supported by the doulas and CHWs reached full gestational age, and 84 percent were born at healthy weights.

WPP funding also helps address the needs of Wisconsin’s aging population, such as a grant to the United Community Center that supports dementia-related health care and caregiver support for Latino people in southeastern Wisconsin.

In northern Wisconsin, WPP funds Oneida and Menominee Nations initiatives to promote traditional food practices and increase access to nutritious food.

Rural public health issues were the focus of a $1 million grant to Marshfield Clinic Health System for its innovative Community Connections Team. Through this funding, when providers in central and northern Wisconsin learn that patients need help with non-medical needs, they connect them with Universities of Wisconsin health professions students, who help find community resources. The project has resulted in 17,000 referrals to supportive services.

“The Wisconsin Partnership Program has made such a positive impact on Wisconsin by funding essential initiatives that are innovative, move health forward, and fund the most intractable challenges for our state,” Kind said. “We work very carefully to ensure that a wide range of applicants hear about the program and have the opportunity to submit proposals.”

Education and Research

With more than $201 million allocated since 2004 to research and education initiatives, WPP’s investments have been catalytic in transforming research and education at SMPH.

“WPP has helped transform the way medical students are taught,” said Elizabeth Petty, MD ’86 (PG ’89), senior associate dean for academic affairs, using as examples the 2007 launch of WARM and the 2016 launch of a new MD curriculum. WPP supported the MD program’s development and delivery of innovative, integrated curriculum strategies that address health equity issues statewide.

WPP has similarly influenced the breadth and depth of research by faculty members and trainees, noted Richard Moss, emeritus professor of cell and regenerative biology and past chair of PERC.

“WPP funding and grant program reviews by WPP committee members have further strengthened what is now a robust continuum that spans basic, translational, clinical, and public health research, all in the interests of scientific discovery and application to improve health and health care,” Moss said.

For instance, PERC awarded a grant for a project to investigate microbiological areas of public health importance, headed by Bruce Klein, MD (PG ’89), professor of pediatrics, medicine, and medical microbiology and immunology. Leveraging findings established via this initial WPP funding, the project successfully competed for a five-year, $16 million Center for Excellence in Translational Research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has been renewed. Led by David Andes, MD, PhD (PG ’96), professor of medicine, the NIH center has identified hundreds of antibiotic drug candidates, some of which are under active development.

WPP’s research grants include innovative community-academic partnerships such as the Oneida Stroke Prevention Program. Robert Dempsey, MD, FASC, chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery, and a team of researchers, clinicians, and medical students partner with the Oneida Nation to reduce stroke risk factors among Tribal members. Participants receive a health assessment and work with health coaches to reduce their stroke risk factors. The tribe’s Elder Council shares knowledge of holistic health care.

Mile Bluff Medical Center, where Sebranek practices, was a testing ground for another WPP grant designed to prevent blindness in rural patients at risk of diabetic retinopathy. Using a system designed by Yao Liu, MD, assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, patients have retinal photos taken in Mauston and sent electronically to Madison, where specialists identify patients for follow-up care. Liu and her team have leveraged findings from this study to obtain a $4.4 million National Eye Institute grant to expand the research.

And WPP funds a wide range of cancer research, such as a grant to Shigeki Miyamoto, PhD, professor of oncology, who is studying a pathway used by T cells that fight against cancer and viral infections.

Transformation

Public health has become deeply woven into the fabric of SMPH. But before WPP funding became available, the following programs did not exist: the Master of Public Health (MPH) program; Population Health Service Fellowship; Preventive Medicine Residency; Medical Scientist (MD/PhD) Training Program; and Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine. WARM has graduated 301 physicians as of May 2024.

In 2003, as school leaders began planning for an integrated school of medicine and public health, Patrick Remington, MD ‘81, MPH, was charged with establishing the MPH program. Demand was strong from health and public policy professionals. And WPP was the catalyst for the program, said Remington, who became the first associate dean for public health.

“We are now known around the country as a medical school that really does walk the public health talk,” he said.

Today, the Population Health Service Fellowship is 20 years old, the MPH program is 19 years old, and the Preventive Medicine Residency is 10 years old. Alumni of these programs are working in key leadership roles around the state and beyond.

“The Wisconsin Partnership Program is novel,” Kind said. “The idea that we have a program like this at SMPH is a tremendous asset. And it allows us to engage in ways that few institutions can do — in true alignment with the Wisconsin Idea. The service component of SMPH is real, it is actualized, and it moves forward in no small part because of the Wisconsin Partnership Program.”

Timeline

Highlights of WPP’s Roots and Impact

The Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) represents a commitment by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health to improve the health of people in Wisconsin now and for years to come. A look back through the years shows the impact of WPP and the programs it supports.

1999: Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin announces its conversion to a for-profit company, donating assets to the two Wisconsin medical schools; UW Medical School (now SMPH) leaders conduct listening sessions in communities throughout the state.

2000: Insurance commissioner approves conversion, sets terms for the endowment’s oversight and accountability, including five-year plans; the plans have been approved at that interval starting in 2003.

2004: Schools receive initial funds; WPP launches under its original name: Wisconsin Partnership Fund for a Healthy Future; Eileen Smith becomes inaugural executive director; first round of 20 community grants total $485,000.

2005: First six New Investigator Program faculty grants total nearly $600,000; Master of Public Health program enrolls first students; Survey of the Health of Wisconsin is launched; Innovations in Medical Education is created; the UW Medical School changes its name to the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

2006: Population Health Service Fellowship Program’s first cohort begins working in public health settings.

2007: First round of seven Collaborative Health Sciences Program grants total $2.1 million; Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine enrolls its first medical students; Institute for Clinical and Translational Research receives initial WPP funding.

2009: Innovations in Medical Education expands to become Transformations in Medical Education and begins planning MD curriculum changes.

2014: Preventive Medicine Residency Program is accredited.

2015: Community Impact Grant Program begins; initial awards total $4 million.

2016: WPP hosts Advancing Health Equity Conference for school and statewide partners; SMPH’s transformed ForWard Curriculum is launched for medical students.

2020: First round of 24 COVID-19 Response Grants total $2.9 million.

2021: Amy Kind, MD ’01, PhD ’11 (PG ’05, ’07), named WPP executive director; first round of eight Maternal and Infant Health Grants total $1.2 million.

2023: Native American Center for Health Professions receives a $1.2 million grant to increase the number of Indigenous students in health sciences.

2024: WPP celebrates its 20th anniversary of grantmaking, with $301 million awarded to 636 projects since 2004.