Quincy ARISE Coalition Receives Funding from the Illinois Department of Public Health to Address Health Inequities

QUIN­CY, IL – Recent­ly, the Illi­nois Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health (IDPH) announced up to $3.7 mil­lion in grants to orga­ni­za­tions around the state to address sys­temic health dis­par­i­ties that have been high­light­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Among the recip­i­ents is the Quin­cy ARISE Coali­tion, a part­ner­ship between Quin­cy Med­ical Group (QMG), YWCA Quin­cy, Bel­la Ease, and the Adams Coun­ty Health Department.

ARISE is a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed pro­gram that stands for Acti­vat­ing Rela­tion­ships In Illi­nois for Sys­temic Equi­ty. It is a joint ini­tia­tive of IDPH’s Cen­ter for Minor­i­ty Health Ser­vices and The Cen­ter for Rur­al Health, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Well-being and Equi­ty (WE) in the World. ARISE funds 18 coali­tions across Illi­nois to advance health equi­ty in part­ner­ship with com­mu­ni­ties expe­ri­enc­ing inequities. Rather than just treat­ing the symp­toms and man­i­fes­ta­tions of health and life inequities, ARISE seeks to address under­ly­ing vital com­mu­ni­ty con­di­tions and root caus­es of health inequities, espe­cial­ly in rur­al areas across the state.

Sele­na Stege­man, Direc­tor of Busi­ness Intel­li­gence at QMG, and Luan­na Flagg, Health Edu­ca­tor with the Adams Coun­ty Health Depart­ment, were among those who spoke at today’s press con­fer­ence. The Quin­cy ARISE Coali­tion brings togeth­er com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions that have a com­mon inter­est in tak­ing actions to under­stand and improve inequities that are inher­ent in our community.

“Our coali­tion came togeth­er in the spring of 2022 for the pur­pose of address­ing post-Covid com­mu­ni­ty needs,” Stege­man stat­ed. ​“Ear­ly on, our coali­tion learned that rur­al Amer­i­ca has unique chal­lenges with social inequities that are dif­fer­ent than urban com­mu­ni­ties. Com­mu­ni­ties in West Cen­tral Illi­nois are geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tanced cre­at­ing chal­lenges includ­ing lack of trans­porta­tion, access to health­care, food inse­cu­ri­ty, lim­it­ed job oppor­tu­ni­ties, and prox­im­i­ty to social services.”

Last fall, in the after­math of Covid-19, the Unit­ed Way of Adams Coun­ty com­plet­ed a com­mu­ni­ty needs assess­ment with a focus on under­stand­ing the state of local finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, edu­ca­tion, and health through a col­lec­tion of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary research, includ­ing engage­ment with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and indi­vid­u­als of lived expe­ri­ence. This research result­ed in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of key health chal­lenges and social deter­mi­nants of health that need to be addressed to improve the health of this community.

“The need has nev­er been greater. Using this research and addi­tion­al data and fund­ing pro­vid­ed through this grant, the Quin­cy ARISE Coali­tion will use a data-dri­ven approach to iden­ti­fy, under­stand, and take nec­es­sary actions to help edu­cate mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty and reduce inequities that exist in health­care,” said Flagg.

The ARISE Coali­tions are formed through­out the state. Each coali­tion is cus­tomiz­ing its health equi­ty expe­ri­ence to meet the needs of the local com­mu­ni­ty in which it serves. Each coali­tion has a range of one to four indi­vid­u­als with lived expe­ri­ence that are part of the dis­cus­sions and deci­sion-mak­ing process­es to change health inequity.

“Although we are oper­at­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the state, we will come togeth­er as one coali­tion in-per­son and month­ly through­out the project. This net­work­ing will pro­vide sup­port among coali­tions and uplift our com­mon goals for change,” said Stegeman.