GREEN BAY – The Medical College of Wisconsin is turning its attention to hypertension, childhood behavioral health, and the well-being of the state’s health care workers.

At a news conference Thursday at Lambeau Field, the Medical College of Wisconsin announced it will be investing $50 million as part of the MCW’s Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment into the three areas to improve them statewide over the next five to 10 years.

The three health-related issues were determined to be priorities based on state data and 18 months of focus groups, surveys, and discussions with health care workers and community partners, said Jesse Ehrenfeld, director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment.

Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin was established by MCW to steward funds from Blue Cross and Blue Shield United of Wisconsin. Since 2004, the endowment has invested $338 million into 643 projects statewide including the creation of the MCW Green Bay and Wausau campuses. La Crosse, Racine, Winnebago, Brown, and Marathon counties have the most projects of at least nine funded by AHW.

It’s unclear what activities or specific projects will be supported by the $50 million invested into the three areas, but the investment is meant to “move the needle” on improving residents’ health in the three areas and expands research, said Joseph Kerschner, MCW dean of the School of Medicine, provost and executive vice president.

High blood pressure

About 1.3 million Wisconsinites have hypertension, and about half of them don’t have it under control, according to data from the state Department of Health Services. About one in six people who have it don’t know they have high blood pressure.

Ehrenfeld said access to care and home blood pressure monitors is important to helping people lower their blood pressure.

Health workforce well-being

Health care workers in the state are still dealing with levels of burnout especially after the pandemic. The Wisconsin Hospital Association described the state’s health care workforce as “critical but stable” in its 2024 Health Care Workforce Report. In 2022, staffing vacancy rates in hospitals was 9.9%, according to the report.

With many workers heading to retirement, Ehrenfield said the endowment decided to prioritize reducing burnout and improving well-being at hospitals to improve the state’s physician shortage. Many health care workers don’t reach out for mental health or substance abuse support because they are afraid of being reprimanded by a medical board or losing their license, Ehrenfield said.

“We need to reduce that stigma,” he said. “They need to be well themselves to take care of others.

Childhood behavioral health

Over half of Wisconsin early care and education professionals reported an increase in challenging behaviors, according to a 2021 survey and are leading to childhood expulsions.

Ehrenfield said the funding will go toward creating more “support systems” around the state and continue the work of a previously AHW behavioral health project.

More: Family circles, robust resource databases, peer-support: what 8 years of mental health progress looks like

Contact Benita Mathew at bmathew@gannett.com.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court renamed the state’s law library after Lavinia Goodell, the state’s first woman lawyer, on Wednesday. The change removes former Justice David Prosser’s name from the building. 

Prosser, who sat on the Court from 1998 to 2016 and before that was the Republican speaker of the state Assembly, had the library named after him shortly before his retirement in 2016. 

The name change drew the ire of conservative members of the Court and Republicans. Justice Rebecca Bradley called the decision “petty and vindictive.” 

“In another petty and vindictive maneuver, the progressive majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court flexes its political power to remove Justice David Prosser’s name from the State Law Library,” Bradley wrote on X, adding that the Court could have honored Goodell in other ways. 

Goodell was admitted to practice law in Rock County in 1874, but a year later she was barred from representing a client in an appeal to the Supreme Court. She then drafted legislation, signed into law in 1877, guaranteeing women the right to practice law in the state. A few years later she became the first woman to brief a case before the Supreme Court and then argued and won her first case at the state Supreme Court shortly before her death in 1880. 

Prosser’s tenure on the Court was often tumultuous, including a 2011 incident in which he put his hands around liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s throat during an argument in the justices’ chambers about former Gov. Scott Walker’s law curbing collective bargaining rights in the state. 

Walsh Bradley was one of the members of the Court who made the decision to remove his name from the library.

OSHKOSH, Wis. (WBAY) – The 2024 Miss Wisconsin Competition is underway in Oshkosh, and the first night of preliminaries saw three winners in two competitions at Alberta Kimball Auditorium Wednesday.

Miss Northern Lights, Mandi Genord, received the Talent Award and a $500 scholarship.

Miss Great Lakes, Willow Newell, and Miss Racine, Christel Revera, tied for top honors in the Evening Wear preliminary. Each received a $250 scholarship.

More women will win in the second preliminary round Thursday night, then Saturday the top 11 candidates will be named and compete in all stages of the competition again to determine who will earn the title of this year’s Miss Wisconsin.

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