ANN ARBOR—The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has provided a $5 million grant to support a new U-M School of Public Health (SPH) undertaking, “The Crossroads of Public Health.”   The Crossroads of Public Health represents both a physical space and an innovative approach to public health research and teaching, with a focus on working with the community.

In the community-based method, the school works closely with organizations and the public to identify and study health issues, and to design and implement programs to address them. SPH has long worked with community partners in Detroit, Flint and communities throughout northern Michigan to address concerns such as asthma, diabetes, infant mortality, dental health, youth violence and tobacco prevention.  

In its physical manifestation, Community Crossroads is the name being given to a 125,000 square-foot addition linking two existing buildings that comprise the School of Public Health. It is slated for completion in 2006. The Community Crossroads will house a “partners room” to give a home base to community and practice partners when they come to campus for teaching and research. Further, the facility will provide new video conferencing and distance learning technology tools to connect community organizations and their representatives with the school.  

The Kellogg grant also will make it possible to install sophisticated information technology at facilities in the communities where partners are located. The so-called technology hubs will provide equipment for video conferencing and distance learning that will better connect communities with SPH resources. In addition, the Kellogg-supported technology hubs will allow SPH to phase in community-based public health work beyond Michigan borders.

“We are excited about this opportunity to support the University of Michigan in this creative approach to narrowing the gap between communities and public health institutions and making academic public health transparent and accessible to underserved communities,” said Terri Wright, Kellogg Foundation program director for the project.

In the Community Crossroads, a two-story open center will house classrooms, conferencerooms, outreach programs, interdisciplinary research centers, communication hubs,an atrium café and other amenities to foster the interaction of people,ideas and disciplines. Rising above the center will be seven floors housing modernopen laboratories, instructional spaces, student and faculty interaction spaces,and offices.

The facility will support a broader series of public health programs designed to build on the school’s nationally recognized work in community-based public health, and to establish a new model of academic public health that uses technology to strengthen and expand collaborative teaching and research.

The Community Crossroads is the capstone of a SPH initiative to foster innovationsin research, teaching and service and to strengthen the ability of communitiesthroughout the world to promote the public’s health. To that end, the schoolhas established a network of 19 academic research centers designed to facilitateinterdisciplinary approaches to complicated problems ranging from the uninsuredto asthma to genetics, and it has launched an ambitious program to recruit anew generation of junior faculty. “The crossroads reflectsthe school’s longstanding tradition of interdisciplinarity and heraldsour future direction,” said SPH Dean Noreen Clark.   “ Community-basedpublic health is one of our finest examples of how disciplines come togetherto develop an effective, novel approach to addressing public health problems.The Crossroads is designed to foster these ends at their optimum.”

The Kellogg Foundation gift and a $5 million anonymous donation received earlier this year are among the early major contributions toward SPH’s fund-raising campaign.  

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations. Its programming activities center around the common vision of a world in which each person has a sense of worth; accepts responsibility for self, family, community and societal well-being; and has the capacity to be productive, and to help create nurturing families, responsive institutions, and healthy communities.

To achieve the greatest impact, the foundation targets its grants toward specific areas. These include: health, food systems and rural development; youth and education; and philanthropy and volunteerism. Within these areas, attention is given to exploring learning opportunities in leadership; information and communication technology; capitalizing on diversity; and social and economic community development. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

For further information, please visit the foundation’s Web site at www.wkkf.org. The site offers: in-depth information about the foundation’s programming interests; information on the foundation’s grant application process; a database of current grant recipients; and access to numerous publications which report on foundation-funded projects.

Related links:

• University of Michigan School of Public Health
• The W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• Connell:  nconnell@umich.edu