Project Summary: President's Challenge
The overall project goals are to evaluate new telehealth interventions in African American community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin related to remote monitoring of chronic health conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, which have rapidly emerged as major factors of co-morbidity and premature mortality in African American population.
The pandemic has shifted the in-person monitoring to remote monitoring, which is now being seen as future of medicine; yet it is unclear how this shift has affected the health disparities among African American population in Milwaukee, and even less is known about how accessibility to telehealth interventions and monitoring via health devices can reduce health disparities in Milwaukee. This project will fill this gap and support existing community-led intervention efforts related to telehealth and remote health monitoring to provide scientific guidance for African American community to better recover from COVID-19 adversity and build resiliency against public health or natural disaster emergencies that may occur in the future. It will also build and/or strengthen relationships with community partners in health care and other agencies working to reduce disparities.
Every effort made to bring wholeness and oneness in the African American community gives hope to all. Opportunities/challenges The project will facilitate and nurture community-engaged collaborative research in Milwaukee, Wisconsin embedded in a bi-directional, community-responsive research partnership between Marquette University and Walnut Way Conservation Corp (WWCC: a community partner serving the predominantly African American population on Milwaukee’s north side).
The team of academic researchers and community partners will work together to: 1) to assess and evaluate the impact of existing telehealth intervention strategies related with COVID-19 at community level, and 2) pilot and evaluate new remote monitoring interventions, designed to offer innovative solutions to community health problems that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.