For Near West Side Partners, Neighborhood Health Is Public Health

This blog post is part of our quarterly series highlighting the work of Healthy People 2030 Champion organizations. Healthy People 2030 Champions are organizations recognized for their work to improve the health and well-being of people in their communities and to help achieve Healthy People 2030’s goals. 

At first glance, the changes to the built environment of Milwaukee’s Near West Side neighborhoods might not seem like public health interventions. However, Near West Side Partners (NWSP), a Healthy People 2030 Champion Organization, relies on innovative approaches to improve the neighborhood and social determinants of health — and by doing so,   improves health and well-being for people in the Near West Side. Successful projects include:

• Creating green traffic triangles (patches of grass in roundabouts or other intersections) to help lower air pollution
• Transforming unused parking lots into urban parks to create community gathering spaces
• Promoting a new rapid-transit bus route to offer an alternative to car travel — and make transportation more equitable for residents
• Addressing housing insecurity through homeownership and rental incentives, down payment assistance, and home repair grants

Using a community-driven approach to address health inequities

NWSP’s successful initiatives are built on a strong foundation of community engagement and multi-sectoral partnerships. The Near West Side is home to nearly 28,000 residents and sustains a thriving business community and several educational organizations. NWSP strives to engage all stakeholders — including residents, employees, students, faith leaders, community groups, and business owners — in working teams that meet regularly to review community priorities, data, define interventions and strategies, and measure progress toward strategic goals. 

Healthy People 2030 has informed the working teams’ efforts from the start. “When we formed the Healthy Community Working Team in 2021, we used data available through Health Compass Milwaukee to see where Near West Side neighborhoods stood on Healthy People 2030 objectives,” says Dr. Abiola Keller, Chair of NWSP’s Healthy Community Working Team. “We’ll continue to use local data, along with questions in our Resident Survey, to evaluate our progress toward Healthy People 2030 objectives.”

In addition, 5 anchor institutions with a presence in the community — Advocate Aurora Health, Harley-Davidson, Marquette University, Molson Coors, and Potawatomi Ventures — share NWSP's mission and focus on housing, commercial corridor development, safety, and community health. Dr. Keller observes that even though some of these anchor institutions may not appear to have “a vested interest in health, they do have a vested interest in the social determinants of health. And that is what we, at NWSP, continue to leverage.”

One example of a successful multisector collaboration between NWSP and its anchor institutions is Davidson Park, a 4.8-acre public park located near Harley-Davidson's corporate headquarters and built on an unused portion of the company’s parking lots. Plans for the project were made after a 2021 summit by the Harley-Davidson Foundation and NWSP brought together over 200 residents and local businesses to discuss ways to improve the community. Davidson Park offers a space for residents and employees of nearby businesses to get active and connect socially — and serves to “reinforce the power of the Harley-Davidson brand to be a force for good within our communities,” according to Harley-Davidson’s president and CEO.

Prioritizing neighborhood safety and infrastructure

Improving neighborhood safety -- top priority for NWSP and its community partners — is a collaborative effort with community partners. When NWSP was founded in 2014, the organization partnered with researchers at Marquette University to conduct a survey about community needs. Residents and local businesses answered this simple, yet critical question: “What is needed to make the Near West Side a great place to live, work, and play?” “Safety and perceptions of safety were among the first items identified,” says NWSP’s Executive Director Lindsey St. Arnold Bell. 

In response, NWSP started working to identify properties that negatively affect other residents’ health, safety, or property values. For example, NWSP and its community partners used public safety data to show that a local tobacco shop that was the focus of over 300 police calls each year due to a variety of criminal activities had become a dangerous nuisance to the neighborhood. When the problem couldn’t be solved by working with property owners, NWSP and its partners led an initiative to close the tobacco shop and redevelop the location as a temporary parking lot to support a nearby daycare facility. This creative solution reflects efforts to address Healthy People 2030 objective AH-10: Reduce the rates of minors and young adults committing violent crimes and supports TU-10: Eliminate cigarette smoking initiation in adolescents and young adults. 

In line with its community-centered approach, NWSP founded the Community Partnership Unit (CPU), a collaborative crime prevention program which includes members of the Milwaukee Police, the District Attorney’s Office, the City Public Health and Public Works Departments, and community organizations. The CPU model is based on 4 core principles:

• Recognizing the community’s role in public safety
• Engaging in problem solving
• Establishing and maintaining partnerships
• Engaging in and evaluating collective efficacy-building activities

In 2022, NWSP and the CPU teamed up to host a gun lock giveaway event after two 3-year-old children were involved in accidental shootings in the Near West Side. NWSP staff, CPU members, domestic violence advocates, and volunteers went door to door to give out gun locks, share information on firearm safety, and engage in conversations on how the community can work together to address gun violence.

Reckless driving turned out to be another major safety concern for people in the area. To decrease traffic speeds and improve pedestrians’ experience, NWSP partnered with the Business Improvement District (BID 10) and the City of Milwaukee to identify intersections with high accident-rates and implement a variety of streetscaping measures — these included repainted crosswalks, expanded curbs, planters filled with native plants, and signage asking drivers to slow down in neighborhoods. As a result, driver yields went up by 23 percent, speeding along the corridor decreased by 17.5 percent, and incidents of excessive speeding (over 40 mph) decreased by 40 percent. These interventions illustrate successful strategies to accelerate progress toward Healthy People 2030 objective IVP-06: Reduce deaths from motor vehicle crashes. 

Promoting safe, stable, and affordable housing

In addition to improving neighborhood safety and infrastructure, NWSP works to provide access to safe, stable, and affordable housing, which is a social determinant of health. Half of the families living in the Near West Side neighborhoods have household incomes below the federal poverty guideline, and the median household income for residents is $19,000. Residents face the near-constant threat of housing instability, with an eviction filing rate of nearly 13 percent. 

Affordable housing is a focus of Healthy People 2030 objective SDOH-04: Reduce the proportion of families that spend more than 30 percent of income on housing. To address this important social determinant of health, NWSP provides rental incentives and down payment assistance both to existing residents and people working in the Near West Side who are interested in moving to the area. Additionally, to improve the safety of homes, NWSP also offer dollar-for-dollar matching grants for exterior repairs and home improvements, which have benefitted 72 homeowners so far since the program launched in 2021.

To support these efforts, NWSP does fundraising and uses Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) grants from banks and financial institutions — and every dollar is much appreciated in neighborhoods where the average age of a home is 105 years. These home improvements can also help meet Healthy People 2030 objectives related to child health and safety — like EH-04: Reduce blood lead levels in children aged 1 to 5 years.

Lessons learned

St. Arnold Bell and Dr. Keller of NWSP shared some insights into what they’ve learned in their work to make the Near West Side a healthy, thriving community.

Start with a positive approach to problem-solving. 

While stakeholders and residents may come from different neighborhoods with different identities or have different priorities, Dr. Keller says her team has the most success when they begin by highlighting the positives and finding common interests. This creates a more welcoming environment before diving deeper into bigger issues. “It’s not about denying the negative,” Dr. Keller says. “Rather, it’s about recognizing our shared humanity — and that allows us to create a place for genuine understanding and connection to advance the work.”

Use data and be ready to take action. 

Dr. Keller also emphasizes the importance of using data and identifying resident’s priorities to make sure efforts create real, sustainable change. For example, NWSP used data from surveys and other research on resident and stakeholder priorities in the development process for Concordia 27 — a community resource center that will provide access to nutritious food, health and wellness services, and enhanced housing with the redevelopment of a long-abandoned historic building. “We’ve been intentional about using the data we gathered to identify services and service providers that should be involved in this effort,” Dr. Keller says. “That has helped us move the project forward as we developed it with residents and potential funders.” 

Identify engagement platforms that speak to interests. 

St. Arnold Bell points out how shared causes can serve to unify and engage individuals and groups who might not usually be active in the public space: “Creating opportunities for connection for groups who do not normally spend time together, be that in person or virtual, is really essential for maintaining the excitement and momentum of community development engagement among stakeholders.” For example, NWSP regularly holds pop-up events to engage with residents and stakeholders right where they live. NWSP staff offers local foods and refreshments — and in exchange, residents complete a short questionnaire to share their thoughts about issues affecting the community.

Engage stakeholders from multiple sectors at key moments.

When NWSP gathered leaders from each of its 5 anchor institutions across sectors at the public announcement of funding for Concordia 27, “it signaled the anchor institutions’ commitment to the neighborhood and the project,” St. Arnold Bell says. Such public shows of support can help sustain momentum and expand engagement.

With these lessons in hand, NWSP continues to use its community-centered approach to improve the built environment of Milwaukee’s “neighborhood of neighborhoods” — and cultivate a “healthier community that is a great place to live, work, play, and stay.”